Genode OS Framework release 13.02 Feb 28, 2013

The version 13.02 takes a major leap with supporting the NOVA hypervisor by fully embracing IOMMUs and NOVA's virtualization capabilities. Additionally, the framework enables the use of ARM Cortex A15, comes with a new audio interface, and introduces file-system notifications.

Following the tradition to focus the February release on platform improvements, we dedicated the release cycle of version 13.02 to bringing the NOVA platform to new heights, revisiting several framework internals, and exploring the Exynos 5250 SoC based on ARM Cortex A15.

The work on the NOVA platform pursued three goals: Improving the kernel to make it fit for Genode's highly dynamic work loads, leveraging the IOMMU support provided by the kernel, and tightly integrating the Vancouver virtualization solution with the Genode environment. These improvements combined turn NOVA into an intriguing base platform for Genode on x86 machines. Besides the x86 architecture, the framework receives new support for ARM Cortex A15 CPUs in the form of the Exynos 5250 SoC. We enabled Genode on this hardware platform using both our custom kernel as well as the Fiasco.OC kernel.

Even though the current version is primarily focused on platform support, there are noteworthy functional improvements as well. A few highlights are a completely redesigned audio interface, added file-system notification capabilities, and a new fault-detection mechanism.

These and many more improvements are described in elaborative detail in the release notes of version 13.02...