Critical.
Authoritative.
Strategic.
Subscribe to CIO Magazine »

NICTA's seL4 microkernel edges closer to commercialisation

The microkernel is at the centre of a number of potential projects being developed by the Department of Defence and the mining industry

Eight months after National ICT Australia (NICTA) released its secure embedded L4 (seL4) microkernel, it has moved closer to commercialisation with potential developments by the Department of Defence and the mining sector using the software.

The seL4, created in collaboration with Open Kernel Labs (OK Labs), is a small operating system kernel that regulates access to a computer’s hardware and is able to distinguish between trusted and untrusted software.

NICTA’s leader of embedded operating systems research and co-founder of OK Labs, Gernot Heiser, told Computerworld Australia that while there has been no final decisions about the use of the kernel, three “fairly concrete” projects had been designed around the software in areas of national security and mining.

“It is in the evaluation stage for a number of possible deployments but these things inevitably take time,” Heiser said. “One obvious application area is military but typical military projects take years and years especially as the development is architected around our kernel.”

“There’s been no actual decisions because that’s in the nature of these things, people bid for projects and then they do the designs and get them approved,” he said.

“We are in a number of projects that are being designed around us, none of them are guaranteed to go ahead but there are some fairly concrete developments.”

According to Heiser, since the software was made available for free download (not for commercial development use) for researchers, developers and manufacturers, it has experienced more than 1000 downloads on both the NICTA and OK Labs websites.

“There’s certainly strong interest out there and a lot of people were actually waiting to get their hands on it… but these things take some time to gel out.

“It’s not a big number [of downloads] compared to many open-source projects, but for something like this which is really of interest to a special group of experts, it's actually quite good.”

The reason behind the release earlier in the year, Heiser said, was primarily to make it accessible to academics who want to design systems and also for future potential users.

Since its release, NICTA has also proved the system can enforce integrity which, Heiser said was a basic safety property and a necessary component in demonstrating its usability in safety critical systems.

According to Heiser, the microkernel is the product of seven years of research at NICTA, following on from around eight years of research at the University of New South Wales.

"Verification of operating-system kernels has been attempted since the 1970s, we pulled it off," Heiser said at the time.

Techworld Australia feature articles:

* Python vs. PHP: Choosing your next project's language

* Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1 review

* 10 ways to improve your PPC marketing strategy

Follow Chloe Herrick on Twitter: @chloe_CW

Follow Computerworld Australia on Twitter: @ComputerworldAU

Join the CIO Australia group on LinkedIn. The group is open to CIOs, IT Directors, COOs, CTOs and senior IT managers.

More about: Department of Defence, Galaxy, Hewlett-Packard, HP, NICTA, Samsung, University of New South Wales, University of New South Wales
References show all

Comments

Post new comment

The content of this field is kept private and will not be shown publicly.
Users posting comments agree to the CIO comments policy.
Login or register to link comments to your user profile, or you may also post a comment without being logged in.
Related Coverage
Related Whitepapers
Latest Stories
Community Comments
Tags: department of defence, microkernel, mining, National ICT Australia (NICTA), security, seL4
Latest Blog Posts
Whitepapers
  • Bend or break: Flexible Policy
    DON’T. PANIC. Aligning business and IT needs has always been a challenge. Finding the right balance between ensuring the safety of sensitive data and enabling the free flow of information is increasingly difficult in today’s evolving regulatory and threat environment. Read on.
    Learn more »
  • Guidance for Calculation of Efficiency (PUE) in Data Centers
    The benefits of determining data center infrastructure efficiency as part of an effective energy management plan are widely recognised. The standard metrics of Power Usage Effectiveness (PUE) and its reciprocal Data Center Infrastructure Efficiency1 (DCIE) have emerged as recognised standards. This paper defines a standard approach to collecting data from data centers and showing how to use it to calculate PUE, with a focus on what to do with data that is confusing or incomplete.
    Learn more »
  • Backup and Recovery as we Know it is Changing
    Increasing complexity in the data centre, including the rapid deployment of virtual servers, ever-expanding compliance requirements, and increasing amounts of sensitive data on mobile devices has put more strain on backup and recovery. Read on.
    Learn more »
All whitepapers
rhs_login_lockGet exclusive access to Invitation only events CIO, reports & analysis.
Recent comments