// cheatsheet: http://powerman.name/doc/asciidoc // homepage: http://www.methods.co.nz/asciidoc/index.html The K2 Operating System ======================= :keywords: Mobile, Operating System, Computer System, Research :description: K2 is an operating system for energy-efficient mobile + System-on-chip. K2 is being developed at Rice University. // .Climbers at K2 in the Himalaya. image:http://images.nationalgeographic.com/wpf/media-live/photos/000/008/cache/climbers_890_990x742.jpg[height=400, role="right", link="http://images.nationalgeographic.com/wpf/media-live/photos/000/008/custom/890_1280x1024-wallpaper-cb1340828606.jpg"] // by Galen Rowell. National Geographic [gray]#Climbers at "the mountain of mountains". Source: link:http://science.nationalgeographic.com/wallpaper/science/photos/mountains-gallery/climbers/[NG]. link:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/K2[Wikipedia]# {nbsp} + {nbsp} + K2 is an operating system for energy-efficient mobile System-on-chip. :numbered!: Why K2? ------- Modern mobile System-on-chip(SoC) often embraces heterogeneous cores that are hosted in separate _coherence domains_, i.e. no hardware coherence among them. This architecture promises high energy efficiency, however complicates software development, // - including applications and OS, thus preventing the energy efficiency from being harvested by software. Can we ease software development by properly constructing OS for such an architecture? To answer this question, we create K2. As a refactoring of Linux 3.4, K2 reuses most of the existing Linux source. Spanning heterogeneous coherence domains, K2 provides a single system image, preserves the current OS performance, and finally ensures high energy efficiency. // Hardware Platforms // ----------------- K2 runs on Texas Instruments OMAP4430/4460 SoC, the hearts of Samsung Galaxy Nexus, Amazon Kindle Fire, Google Glass, etc. OMAP4 incorporates both the powerful ARM Cortex-A9 and the low-power ARM Cortex-M3. Publications ----------- - [*ASPLOS'14*] "link:https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/4159218/K2/lin-asplos14.pdf[K2: A Mobile Operating System for Heterogeneous Coherence Domains]," Felix Xiaozhu Lin, Zhen Wang, and Lin Zhong, in _Proc. ACM Int. Conf. Architectural Support for Programming Languages and Operating Systems (ASPLOS)_, March 2014. [red]#Best Paper Award# - [*HotPower'12*] "link:http://www.cs.rice.edu/~xl6/lin12hotpower.pdf[Supporting Distributed Execution of Smartphone Workloads on Loosely Coupled Heterogeneous Processors]," Felix Xiaozhu Lin, Zhen Wang, and Lin Zhong, in _Proc. the 2012 Workshop on Power-Aware Computing and Systems (HotPower)_, October 2012. Software -------- .Pre-built image Quick start: ---- wget https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/4159218/K2/release/k2-panda.img.gz gzip -dc k2-panda.img.gz | dd of=/dev/sdX ---- For detailed instructions see link:prebuilt.html[here]. .Source code For obtaining and building from the source, see link:build.html[instructions]. .Hacking K2 Here are our link:hacking.html[notes]. Acknowledgement --------------- * K2 was supported in part by NSF CAREER Award #1054693. * The current K2 implementation is based on ARM Linux 3.4 released by link:https://launchpad.net/linaro-landing-team-ti[Linaro TI landing team] (tilt). * K2 has benefited from the 'linux-panda' project at link:http://www.nicta.com.au/[NICTA], in particular: ** A portion of the M3 kernel and user code is from, or is derived from link:http://www.ertos.nicta.com.au/downloads/linux-panda-m3.tbz2[linux-panda]. ** Most of the M3 user-space toolchain is from link:http://www.ertos.nicta.com.au/downloads/linux-panda-m3-toolchain.tbz2[linux-panda-m3-toolchain]. People ------ K2 is being developed at Rice link:http://www.recg.org[Efficient Computing Group]. Faculty:: link:http://www.ruf.rice.edu/~lzhong[Lin Zhong] PhD students:: link:http://www.felixlin.org[Felix Xiaozhu Lin] (Lead) + link:http://www.owlnet.rice.edu/~zw3/index.html[Zhen Wang] [small]#This page is generated with asciidoc. link:index.txt[source]# include::google-analytics.txt[]