TinyOS on top of okl4

[Dennis Gessner]

Hello everyone,

in one of my projects the discussion came upon, if it is possible to run
TinyOS on top of okl4.

I would like to hear some other opinions if you see any problems to use
TinyOS there. As far as I know (correct me if I am wrong), TinyOS is
"only" a collection of libraries. Of course - if programs (or TinyOS
itself) want to use system-hardware, this has to be modified a little
bit (timer device, UART, aso.).

What is your meaning about that - is it possible, how much work can I
expect? Did anyone already work with TinyOS in combination with okl4?

Best regards,
Dennis

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[Guanghui, Cheng]

On Monday 04 May 2009 04:48:53 pm Dennis Gessner wrote:
> Hello everyone,
>
> in one of my projects the discussion came upon, if it is possible to run
> TinyOS on top of okl4.
        What is the benefit of TinyOS on top of OKL4? As i know the TinyOS is used
for dust device or OKL4 is for embedded device.  I think it is possible to
port TinyOS to OKL4 but maybe the problem is the OKL4 can't be used for dust
devices such as sensors.
                                                                                                        Cheng


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[Dennis Gessner]

> What is the benefit of TinyOS on top of OKL4? As i know the TinyOS is used
> for dust device or OKL4 is for embedded device.  I think it is possible to
> port TinyOS to OKL4 but maybe the problem is the OKL4 can't be used for dust
> devices such as sensors.
> Cheng
>

For me (and a couple of other people), there are a lot of benefits.

There is a lot of existing software made for sensor-nodes working with
TinyOS. Also our project-partners are familiar programming inside TinyOS
- not okl4. The goal is - to get a secure operating system on these
nodes and I do not agree that okl4 can not be used inside these nodes.
Everyone should have the possibility to choose either he want to use
TinyOS - or our "secured node" solution - without additional work for them.

Right now we have the choice of two possible hardware-solutions. One
with an ARM9 core and one with an PXA271 core. Both solutions have
enough memory (with MMU) and cpu-power to work with okl4 - and as far as
I know, there is already done a lot of work with okl4 and the ARM9/PXA
XScale cpu. Using okl4 should be possible.

Anyway - nice to hear your opinion that it should be possible to port
TinyOS to get it working on top of okl4.

More comments are very welcome. :-)

Best regards
Dennis


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[Sergio Ruocco]

At the end of the day, most intelligent sensors (those deployed in WSNs,
at least) are basically single-purpose, dedicated devices, intended to
run just one tightly-coded application on bare metal. There is little
need for an OS if only 1 "simple" application runs. Welcome to the wild
no-OS land, where some of my students ventured to never come back ;-)

Moreover, the sensor's CPU, Flash and RAM can be too small to
accommodate, besides an application, a real OS (= providing at least
threads, scheduling, IPC, and protection), even if it is a 'small'
microkernel like L4 or L4-nano.

For example, CPUs of the MSP-430 family I am using now in an embedded
sys. class have as little as 1 KB of Flash memory and 256 BYTES of RAM:

http://focus.ti.com/paramsearch/docs/parametricsearch.tsp?familyId=342§ionId=95&tabId=1200&family=mcu

Even if there are some MSP-430s with a large-enough memory, they still
are 16 bit CPUs (without protection), and I don't know if OKL4/-nano
will build and run on a 16 bit CPU (but ask OK-Labs guys for definitive
answers on OKL4's absolute minimum hardware requirements).

However, L4 surely lives and thrives in the immediately higher step of
the embedded ladder: general-purpose embedded systems with 32/64-bit
CPUs and "some" KBs of RAM.

These systems are intended to run multiple applications, and thus need a
real OS to share resources and devices in a secure and efficient way. A
TinyOS port to OKL4 would provide a portability layer for WSN
applications on this class of devices.

Cheers,

        Sergio


Guanghui, Cheng wrote:

> On Monday 04 May 2009 04:48:53 pm Dennis Gessner wrote:
>> Hello everyone,
>>
>> in one of my projects the discussion came upon, if it is possible to run
>> TinyOS on top of okl4.
> What is the benefit of TinyOS on top of OKL4? As i know the TinyOS is used
> for dust device or OKL4 is for embedded device.  I think it is possible to
> port TinyOS to OKL4 but maybe the problem is the OKL4 can't be used for dust
> devices such as sensors.
> Cheng
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> Developer mailing list
> [hidden email]
> https://lists.okl4.org/mailman/listinfo/developer

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[Guanghui, Cheng]

On Monday 04 May 2009 10:32:43 pm Dennis Gessner wrote:

> > What is the benefit of TinyOS on top of OKL4? As i know the TinyOS is
> > used for dust device or OKL4 is for embedded device.  I think it is
> > possible to port TinyOS to OKL4 but maybe the problem is the OKL4 can't
> > be used for dust devices such as sensors.
> > Cheng
>
> For me (and a couple of other people), there are a lot of benefits.
>
> There is a lot of existing software made for sensor-nodes working with
> TinyOS. Also our project-partners are familiar programming inside TinyOS
> - not okl4. The goal is - to get a secure operating system on these
> nodes and I do not agree that okl4 can not be used inside these nodes.
> Everyone should have the possibility to choose either he want to use
> TinyOS - or our "secured node" solution - without additional work for them.
>
> Right now we have the choice of two possible hardware-solutions. One
> with an ARM9 core and one with an PXA271 core. Both solutions have
> enough memory (with MMU) and cpu-power to work with okl4 - and as far as
> I know, there is already done a lot of work with okl4 and the ARM9/PXA
> XScale cpu. Using okl4 should be possible.

        If your guys plan to use the ARM9 core to be as the sensor node and i think
it should be possible to use the OKL4 as the hardware abstraction layer in
these nodes.
        Before when i touched the TinyOS they were used in the Crossbow hardware of
reource strictly limited. But unluckily i have no any experiments of combined
OKL4 and TinyOS. I use these two OSes separately for different projects.

        As i know now the Linux and ITRON have been ported to OKL4.  
        About L4Linux i think these two papers from Adam could show us the details
about this porting.
        http://os.inf.tu-dresden.de/papers_ps/adam-beleg.pdf
        http://os.inf.tu-dresden.de/papers_ps/adam-diplom.pdf
        OKLinux is similar as the L4Linux until now there is no public document about
OKLinux details. So we can use the documents of L4Linux to describle the
OKLinux.
        About ITRON you can read this one:
        http://www.cs.utah.edu/~aburtsev/doc/l4-mitron_report_paper.pdf
       
        That's all.
                                                                                        Cheng
       
       


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[Guanghui, Cheng]

On Monday 04 May 2009 10:34:37 pm Sergio Ruocco wrote:

> At the end of the day, most intelligent sensors (those deployed in WSNs,
> at least) are basically single-purpose, dedicated devices, intended to
> run just one tightly-coded application on bare metal. There is little
> need for an OS if only 1 "simple" application runs. Welcome to the wild
> no-OS land, where some of my students ventured to never come back ;-)
>
> Moreover, the sensor's CPU, Flash and RAM can be too small to
> accommodate, besides an application, a real OS (= providing at least
> threads, scheduling, IPC, and protection), even if it is a 'small'
> microkernel like L4 or L4-nano.

        Yes, now the sensor the TinyOS could be deployed on is so small that it can't
support an real OS, even the microkernel OS is not, too. That is why i want
to know the benefits of TinyOS on top of OKL4.
> For example, CPUs of the MSP-430 family I am using now in an embedded
> sys. class have as little as 1 KB of Flash memory and 256 BYTES of RAM:
> http://focus.ti.com/paramsearch/docs/parametricsearch.tsp?familyId=342§
>ionId=95&tabId=1200&family=mcu
        Thanks for your posting about MSP-430 family. It is so interesting.
> Even if there are some MSP-430s with a large-enough memory, they still
> are 16 bit CPUs (without protection), and I don't know if OKL4/-nano
> will build and run on a 16 bit CPU (but ask OK-Labs guys for definitive
> answers on OKL4's absolute minimum hardware requirements).
        As i understand, Now the L4 is so dependent on the 32 bit CPU because lots of
key data structures assume that the platform is 32-bit or more. It seems that
the L4 developers make the full use of the 32-bit now. If they change to 16
bit most of the codes needs to rewrite.
> However, L4 surely lives and thrives in the immediately higher step of
> the embedded ladder: general-purpose embedded systems with 32/64-bit
> CPUs and "some" KBs of RAM.
>
> These systems are intended to run multiple applications, and thus need a
> real OS to share resources and devices in a secure and efficient way. A
> TinyOS port to OKL4 would provide a portability layer for WSN
> applications on this class of devices.
        Good point. Maybe the TinyOS on top of OKL4 could be a choice of secure
wireless sensor network as  TinyOS itself can't support complex secure
mechanisms.
        Thanks.
                                                                                                        Cheng Guanghui

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