Xv6-Riscv 2025 Version

The link is to a course in operating system design and implementation that uses a simple kernel based on a historically relevant UNIX. The simple kernel has been updated to take advantage of a relatively new architecture (RISC-V) that was developed academically (but has actual industrial chips and boards that you can buy and run).

It's great pedagogically because the kernel is simple, well-architected, and excellent for undergrads to work with. Historically, academic UNIX has been tremendously useful for development of new concepts, as well as teaching the next generation.

Some notes of interest: 1) all-around genius Russ Cox is one of the developers and teacher for the course. 2) another teacher is Robert Morris Jr, who developed the sendmail worm back in the day. He is now a professor at MIT.

Sauce: https://github.com/mit-pdos/xv6-riscv

> xv6 is a re-implementation of Dennis Ritchie's and Ken Thompson's Unix Version 6 (v6). xv6 loosely follows the structure and style of v6, but is implemented for a modern RISC-V multiprocessor using ANSI C.

Book from a previous year: https://pdos.csail.mit.edu/6.828/2024/xv6/book-riscv-rev4.pd... (PDF)

I find really interesting the fact that nice code (and book) like that of the xv6-riscv didactic OS gets update.

IMHO any wannabe programmer should spend some time here to fully grasp core concepts and not just high level stuff.

Did anything change? I have been meaning to walk through the code, so I have an old copy downloaded.