Nintendo actual devices use microkernel based designs.
We are way past the usual FUD against microkernels.
We are way past the usual FUD against microkernels.
Now on to your point about the complaint the GP and myself made being FUD; it’s really not. The closest to a monolithic kernels performance any micro kernel has gotten was L4 and those benchmarks was running Linux on top of L4 vs bare metal Linux. While the work on L4 is massively impressive there is still a big caveat, the actual workload was still effectively ran on a monolithic kernel with L4 acting like a hypervisor. So most of the advantages that a micro kernel offers were rendered moot and there was still a small performance hit for it.
Why doesn’t that matter for the Nintendo Switch? Probably because any DRM countermeasures in user space would have a bigger performance penalty and a micro kernel offers some protections there as part of the design. That’s just a guess but as I opened with, Nintendo are quite secretive about their system software so it’s hard to make the kind of conclusive arguments you like to claim.
That was literally what I said :)
> shows their massive potential for constrained devices. Although certainly not for performance reasons
Games consoles are about as far removed from a constrained device as you could possibly get.
It seems to me that you are always ignore low-end devices and very old devices.
If we are talking about an PS5 then yes, this and similar devices are not very constrained, even a full blown Kubuntu might run on some.
But, again there are low-end gaming devices with a tiny black and white screen for 10 dollars and old gaming hardware with very tight constrains. The N64 is certainly one of those constrained old gaming devices.
PS5 would easily run Linux considering the PS3 had a few Linux distros ported to it (back when Sony endorsed running Linux on their hardware via the “Other OS” option, which they later removed). Linux is pretty lightweight by modern hardware standards anyways. It’s just not suitable for every domain (but what OS is?)
On then topic of consoles running Linux, pretty sure I have a CD-R somewhere with Linux for the Dreamcast. That was the era when consoles really started to converge on a modern-looking software development approach.
I never did. I never mentioned current generation consoles not even implicitly. I always talked either about the N64 or (gaming) devices that are constrained and cannot run linux.
“I think that Nintendo might use Microkernels [in the Switch] according to reverse engeneering finds shows their massive potential for constrained devices.”
Maybe you hadn’t grokked that pjmlp was talking about the Switch (Nintendo’s current generation console) rather than the N64?
Either way, my other comment[0] also applies:
> Nintendo actual devices use microkernel based designs. We are way past the usual FUD against microkernels.
Regarding pjmlp post, yes that's true, it wasn't clear (and still isn't) to me from his post, that he specifically speaks about the Switch when referring to "devices".
I know it’s not there in your original comment, that’s why it was inside square brackets. That’s a standard way of including context in a quote that otherwise would lack said context. You would see that in news papers and other publications. This isn’t some weird markup I’ve just invented and it’s definitely not a figment of my imagination because the post you were replying to was about the Switch.
> Regarding pjmlp post, yes that's true, it wasn't clear (and still isn't) to me from his post, that he specifically speaks about the Switch when referring to "devices".
You’re right, it wasn’t explicit. My apologies there.
[No problem.]
https://developer.nintendo.com/
Other than that I can only point out the CCC related
Also given the amount of hypervisor and container baggage that gets placed on top of Linux to make for the lack of microkernel like safety, it doesn't really matter if it happens to win a couple of micro-benchmarks.
And with regards to your point about Linux vs micro kernels, it does make a massive difference when you’re talking about hardware like the N64 which wouldn’t want any of those features which micro kernels excel at and which every instruction wasted is going to cost the user experience heavily. This point was made abundantly clear at the start of the conversation as well.
Look, I have nothing against micro kernels. There’s an architectual beauty to them which I really like. It’s the functional programming equivalent of kernel design. But pragmatically it wouldn’t be your silver bullet in the very specific context we were discussing (re N64). And to be honest I’m sick of you pulling these pathetic straw man arguments in every thread you post on.
The problem worth micro kernels is that abstraction isn’t free. That’s less of an issue with modern hardware running modern work loads because you’d need to put that memory safety in regardless of the kernel architecture and chips these days are fast enough that the benefits of security and safety far far outweigh the deminishing cost in performance. However on the N64 you don’t need any of the benefits that a micro kernel offers while you do need to preserve as many clock cycles as you can. So a micro kernel isn’t well suited for that specific domain. The case would be different again for any modern low footprint hardware because they’d still be running on CPUs clocked at an order of magnitude more and modern embedded system might need to take security or stability concerns more seriously than an air gapped 90s game console.
In short, micro kernels are the future but the N64, being a retro system, needs an approach from the past.
This is why it doesn’t help how modern and 90s hardware have been conflated as equivalent throughout this discussion.
How come that Nintendo decided to use them (according to reverse engeneering finds)? If they are not suited, then Nintendo should know that right?
The N64 doesn’t run any OS. It’s just firmware that invokes a ROM which runs bare metal.
The Switch, however, does have an operating system.
There is around 20 years difference between the two games consoles. That’s 20 years of Moore’s law. 20 years of consumer expectations of fast processors and fancier graphics. And 20 years of evolution with developer tooling and thus their expectations.
You cannot compare the two consoles in the way you’re trying to. It’s like comparing a 1920s racing car to a 2020s F1 car and asking why they are so different. Simply put: because technology has advanced so much in that time it’s now possible to do stuff that wasn’t dreamt of before.
I don’t think there’s much to be gained in speculation about proprietary operating systems running on newer hardware though.
That's very interesting, can you provide a source?
https://media.ccc.de/v/c4.openchaos.2018.06.glitching-the-sw...