Open Kernel Labs

Open Kernel Labs
	General Dynamics C4 Systems
Successor	Cog Systems
Headquarters	Chicago, Illinois, United States
Key people	Steve Subar, cofounder, CEO; Gernot Heiser, cofounder, CTO
Products	OKL4 microkernels and hypervisor
Website	gdmissionsystems.com/products/cross-domain-solutions/hypervisor

Open Kernel Labs (OK Labs) is a privately owned company that develops microkernel-based hypervisors and operating systems for embedded systems. The company was founded in 2006 by Steve Subar and Gernot Heiser as a spinout from NICTA. It was headquartered in Chicago, while research and development was located in Sydney, Australia. The company was acquired by General Dynamics in September 2012.^[1]

Products

OKL4 Microvisor

The OKL4 Microvisor is an

ARM, MIPS, and x86 processors.^[2]

OKL4 has been deployed on over 2 billion mobile phones,[3] both as a baseband processor operating system and for hosting guest operating systems. Most notable and visible is the company's design win at Motorola for the Evoke QA4 messaging phone, the first phone which employs virtualization to support two concurrent operating systems (Linux and Binary Runtime Environment for Wireless (BREW)) on one processor core.^[4]

Paravirtualized guest OSes

OK Labs also supplies ready-to-integrate paravirtualized guest application operating systems, including OK:Symbian (

Windows) and OK:Android (Android

).

Hardware virtualization

The OKL4 Microvisor supports ARM hardware virtualization extensions, as introduced in the Cortex-A15 processor. The use of hardware virtualization greatly reduces the changes required to a guest OS.

Background

OK Labs and OKL4 are the result of collaboration among academia, business, and open-source development. OK Labs technology is derived from the

Citrix

and other venture partners. OK Labs technology continues to benefit from ties to academia and research projects, to NICTA, and to the global open-source community.

Acquisition

The company was acquired by General Dynamics in September 2012 and has since closed its Sydney office. In February 2014, Cog Systems was founded by former Open Kernel Labs staff and continued OKL4 development in Sydney. In April 2019, Cog Systems went into liquidation and closed.^[5]

References

^ "General Dynamics acquires NICTA start-up Open Kernel Labs". NICTA. September 12, 2012.^{[dead link]}
^ "Open Kernel Labs: Be open. Be safe". Okl4.org. 2008-08-12. Archived from the original on 2008-08-20. Retrieved 2014-02-02.
^ "Hypervisor Products". General Dynamics Mission Systems. Retrieved 16 November 2020.
^ "A Google Company". Motorola. 2013-12-30. Archived from the original on May 1, 2011. Retrieved 2014-02-02.
^ "Notice of Appointment as Liquidator". 2019-04-23.

External links

Official website
Open Kernel Labs homepage
Open Kernel Labs Community Wiki
NICTA home page^{[permanent dead link]}
Cog Systems home page
"Hypervisor Claimed 100% Bug Free". LinuxForDevices. JournalDev IT Services Private, Ltd. Archived from the original on 2013-01-27.

[1] "General Dynamics acquires NICTA start-up Open Kernel Labs". NICTA. September 12, 2012.^{[dead link]}

[2] "Open Kernel Labs: Be open. Be safe". Okl4.org. 2008-08-12. Archived from the original on 2008-08-20. Retrieved 2014-02-02.

[3] "Hypervisor Products". General Dynamics Mission Systems. Retrieved 16 November 2020.

[4] "A Google Company". Motorola. 2013-12-30. Archived from the original on May 1, 2011. Retrieved 2014-02-02.

[5] "Notice of Appointment as Liquidator". 2019-04-23.

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