F9: A Secure and Efficient Microkernel Built for Deeply Embedded Systems
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F9 is a new open source microkernel designed for deeply embedded systems like IoT devices. It aims to provide efficiency, security, and a flexible development environment. F9 follows microkernel principles with minimal kernel functionality and isolates components as user-level processes. It uses capabilities for access control and focuses on performance through techniques like tickless scheduling and adaptive power management.
F9: A Secure and Efficient Microkernel Built for Deeply Embedded Systems
- 1. F9: A Secure and Efficient Microkernel Built for Deeply Embedded Systems Jim Huang ( 黃敬群 ) <jserv.tw@gmail.com> Dec 9, 2013 / CCU Taiwan Aug 28, 2013 / JuluOSDev Aug 3, 2013 / COSCUP
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- 3. Goals of This Presentation • Introduce F9 microkernel, new open source implementation built from scratch, which deploys modern kernel techniques, derived from L4 microkernel designs, to deeply embedded devices. https://github.com/f9micro • Characteristics of F9 microkernel – Efficiency: performance + power consumption – Security: memory protection + isolated execution – Flexible development environment
- 4. Agenda • Target: Deeply embedded devices • Microkernel overview • Characteristics of F9 Microkernel
- 5. Target: Deeply Embedded Devices
- 6. Deeply Embedded Devices • Power awareness; solid and limited applications • Multi-tasking or cooperative scheduling is still required • IoT (Internet of Things) is the specialized derivative with networking facility • Communication capability is built-in for some products • Example: AIRO wristband (health tracker) http://www.weweartech.com/amazingnewusessmartwatches/
- 8. We built in-house OS for products and releases the basic part as an open source effort (invisible) Medical devices make sense in our life. :: home-care :: advance warning :: security (invisible) Medical devices make sense in our life. :: home-care :: advance warning :: security
- 10. Microkernel Concepts • Minimal kernel and hardware enforce separation • Only kernel runs in CPU privileged mode • Components are user!level processes • No restrictions on component software • Reuse of legacy software
- 11. principle of least privilege (POLA) A capability is a communicable, unforgeable token of authority. It refers to a value that references an object along with an associated set of access rights. A user program on a capability-based operating system must use a capability to access an object.
- 12. Case Study: Bugs inside big kernels • Drivers cause 85% of Windows XP crashes. – Michael M. Swift, Brian N. Bershad, Henry M. Levy: “Improving the Reliability of Commodity Operating Systems”, SOSP 2003 • Error rate in Linux drivers is 3x (maximum: 10x) – Andy Chou, Junfeng Yang, Benjamin Chelf, Seth Hallem, Dawson R. Engler: “An Empirical Study of Operating System Errors”, SOSP 2001 • Causes for driver bugs – 23% programming error – 38% mismatch regarding device specification – 39% OS-driver-interface misconceptions – Leonid Ryzhyk, Peter Chubb, Ihor Kuz and Gernot Heiser: “Dingo: Taming device drivers”, EuroSys 2009
- 13. Monolithic Kernel vs. Microkernel
- 14. Microkernel Philosophy A concept is tolerated inside the microkernel only if moving it outside the kernel, i.e., permitting competing implementations would prevent the implementation of the systems' required functionality. – Jochen Liedtke
- 15. Microkernel • Minimalist approach – IPC, virtual memory, thread scheduling • Put the rest into user space – Device drivers, networking, file system, user interface • Disadvantages – Lots of system calls and context switches • Examples: Mach, L4, QNX, MINIX, IBM K42
- 16. 3 Generations of Microkernel • Mach (1985-1994) – replace pipes with IPC (more general) – improved stability (vs monolithic kernels) – poor performance • L3 & L4 (1990-2001) – order of magnitude improvement in IPC performance • written in assembly, sacrificed CPU portability • only synchronus IPC (build async on top of sync) – very small kernel: more functions moved to userspace • seL4, Fiasco.OC, Coyotos, NOVA (2000-) – platform independence – verification, security, multiple CPUs, etc.
- 17. Microkernel Paging • Microkernel forwards page fault to a pager server. • Kernel or server decides which pages need to be written to disk in low memory situations. • Pager server handles writing pages to disk.
- 18. Recursive Address Space • Initial address space controlled by first process. – Controls all available memory. – Other address spaces empty at boot. • Other processes obtain memory pages from first or from their other processes that got pages from first. • Why is memory manager flexibility useful? – Different applications: real-time, multimedia, disk cache. Grant Map Flush
- 19. Characteristics of F9 Microkernel
- 20. 4 Aspects • BSD Licensing (two-clause), suitable for both research and commercial usage. • Efficiency – performance: fast IPC and well-structured designs – energy-saving: tickless scheduling, adaptive power management • Security – memory protection: MPU guarded – Isolated execution: L4 based, capabilities model • Flexible development – Kprobes – profile-directed optimizations
- 21. Why are current systems unreliable? • Systems are huge – No single person can understand the whole system > F9 Microkernel has only 2K LoC of portable C • Bug fixes usually introduce new bugs. > F9 introduces execution domains and on-the-fly patches • Poor fault isolation – No isolation between system components – OS contains hundreds of procedures linked together as a single binary program running on the kernel mode. > F9 is built from scratch and well-engineered for isolation
- 22. F9 Microkernel Parent Partition Applications VM Worker Process File system Server VM Worker Process Application Framework Memory Manament server (Interrupts) Scheduling Policy Unstrused Domain F9 Microkernel Architecture Media Driver Network Driver Network Stack Board specific Trusted Domain Task Manament KProbes In-kernel debugger User Space Kernel Space
- 23. Principles • F9 follows the fundamental principles of L4 microkernels – implements address spaces, thread management, and IPC only in the privileged kernel. • Designed and customized for ARM Cortex-M, supporting NVIC (Nested Vectored Interrupt Controller), Bit Banding, MPU (Memory Protection Unit)
- 24. Thread • Each thread has its own TCB (Thread Control Block) and addressed by its global id. • Also dispatcher is responsible for switching contexts. Threads with the same priority are executed in a round-robin fashion.
- 25. Memory Management • split into three concepts: – Memory pool, which represent area of physical address space with specific attributes. – Flexible page, which describes an always size aligned region of an address space. Unlike other L4 implementations, flexible pages in F9 represent MPU region instead. – Address space, which is made up of these flexible pages. • System calls are provided to manage address spaces: – Grant: memory page is granted to a new user and cannot be used anymore by its former user. – Map: This implements shared memory – the memory page is passed to another task but can be used by both tasks. – Flush: The memory page that has been mapped to other users will be flushed out of their address space.
- 26. IPC • The concept of UTCB (user-level thread-control blocks) is being taken on. A UTCB is a small thread- specific region in the thread's virtual address space, which is always mapped. Therefore, the access to the UTCB can never raise a page fault, which makes it perfect for the kernel to access system-call arguments, in particular IPC payload copied from/to user threads. • Kernel provides synchronous IPC (inter-process communication), for which short IPC carries payload in CPU registers only and full IPC copies message payload via the UTCBs of the communicating parties.
- 27. Realtime: overload tolerance • Hard realtime must be based on worst-case analysis • overload must be tolerated gracefully and predictable • Applications can be split into mandatory and optional parts 3535 Hermann Härtig et al. mult. TU Dresden Operating Systems Group SEVECOM Budapest wcet 95%
- 28. Energy efficiency: Tickless • Introduce tickless timer which allow the ARM Cortex-M to wake up only when needed, either at a scheduled time or on an interrupt event. • Therefore, it results in better current consumption than the common approach using the system timer, SysTick, which requires a constantly running and high frequency clock.
- 29. Kprobes: dynamic instrumentation • Inspired by Linux Kernel, allowing developers to gather additional information about kernel operation without recompiling or rebooting the kernel. • It enables locations in the kernel to be instrumented with code, and the instrumentation code runs when the ARM core encounters that probe point. • Once the instrumentation code completes execution, the kernel continues normal execution.
- 30. Debugging and profiling mechanisms • configurable debug console • memory dump • thread profiling – name, uptime, stack allocated/current/used • memory profiling – kernel table, pool free/allocated size, fragmentation
- 31. Reference • From L3 to seL4: What Have We Learnt in 20 Years of L4 Microkernels? Kevin Elphinstone and Gernot Heiser, NICTA/UNSW • Microkernel Construction" http://os.inf.tu-dresden.de/Studium/MkK/ • Microkernel-based Operating Systems http://www.inf.tu-dresden.de/index.php?node_id=1314 • The L4 Microkernel, Hermann Härtig, Technische Universität Dresden • Microkernels, Arun Krishnamurthy, University of Central Florida