Roadmap 2016

[Jookia]

On Tue, Jan 12, 2016 at 04:32:20PM +0100, Reto Buerki wrote:
> * Distributed Genode
>
> Having a complete Genode system running in one Muen subject does not
> bring much benefit as it does not leverage the isolation properties
> provided by the SK. Therefore we intend to add support for executing
> multiple Genode subjects as a distributed environment while providing
> inter-subject communication channels. In order for the Genode instances
> to exchange data, the concept of so-called Proxy components as suggested
> by the Genode developers will be applied.
>
> The proxy concept uses two components: a server and a client. Both of
> them implement a specific Genode service interface and communicate using
> a Virual Hardware (VHW) abstraction layer to create a bridge between the
> separated components. The following diagram illustrates the concept for
> the Log service:
>
> log() -> Proxy:Client -> | VHW | -> Proxy:Server -> Log_Server
>
> For Muen, we will implement the VHW functionality using shared memory
> channels and events.

This seems like a really interesting idea, and something I've thought about for
a while. Could you elaborate a little more on what you think the VHW
functionality might entail? Is it specific to the kernel?

I somewhat imagine a Genode system running over a network with different kernels
per-device, so in that scenario it'd be a network VHW.

On another note, this is some really great work being done, I'm excited to see
what comes of it- Perhaps the next Qubes OS for x86_64.

> Cheers
> - reto

Cheers,
Jookia.