Web site: os.inf.tu-dresden.de/L4/
Origin: Germany
Category: microkernel
Desktop environment: CLI
Architecture: x86, x86_64, ARM, MIPS, SPARC, RISC-V
Based on: Independent
Wikipedia: L4 microkernel family
Media: Install
The last version | Released: unknown
L4 – a familly of microkernel’s familly, orginally created in 1993.
It was designed from the ground up with performance as a primary goal. The kernel was purely written in x86 assembler and highly optimized.
Over the time several groups have adapted the L4 idea and developed other kernels. Among performance, new goals were maintainability and portability. Nowadays the kernels are written in higher-level languages like C++ and are running on many different architectures.
The L4/x86 µ-kernel has been developed by Jochen Liedtke at GMD, IBM Watson Research Center, and Universität Karlsruhe.
Together with Fiasco, the L4/x86 µ-kernel forms the basis of the DROPS operating systems project which supports running real-time and time-sharing applications concurrently on one computer.
To support standard time-sharing applications, we have created L4Linux, a Linux server for L4 which can be run using a standard Linux distribution on L4/x86 without recompiling anything. L4Linux runs in user mode as an application program on top of L4/x86.
The L4Re Microkernel, alias Fiasco, is a 3rd-generation microkernel (µ-kernel).
The L4Re Microkernel can be used to construct flexible systems. The microkernel is the base for the L4Re system which supports running real-time, time-sharing and virtualization applications concurrently on one system. The L4Re Microkernel is both suitable for big and complex systems as well as small, embedded applications.
L4Ka::Pistachio is the latest L4 microkernel developed by the System Architecture Group at the University of Karlsruhe in collaboration with the DiSy group at the University of New South Wales, Australia. It is the first available kernel implementation of the L4 Version 4 kernel API (currently code-named Version X.2), which is fully 32 and 64 bit clean, provides multiprocessor support, and super-fast local IPC.