Q1-kernel / Blog: Recent posts

On the mission to test how good lasm is i tried to make a bootloader. This is one of the worst ideas i ever had cause today i stayed like 3-4 hours thinking on how should this work. After some struggle i think i got it and now you can see the bootloader that enters long mode switches to protected mode and just jmp and pushes main in the kernel. It was a struggle cause i had to declare every singe thing i use and i had to use very small commands (so no ldp lsl xt con cmp) and i had to declare main in u64 which was very hard. As now the bootloader is very very basic but it boots Q1-kernel and it prints "hello world from userspace" in userspace.
I still have to work on it but for now this is what i have.

Just working on making Q1-kernel to work on any computer.
And making it more stable.

Q1-kernel 1.2.5 stable exists but in nightly version cause skdjgfiefsdfu

Q1-kernel V1.3.5 is very unstable i think cause i just got the code from the two guys that helped me and their work was very interesting
The "micro kernel" part for advance cpu log, per core buffer etc, was made by MJ_jakk that btw does not mean Michael Jakson but its a nickname from redox developers
And with the filesystem i got helped by Harry-Youth where he prepared this code for a few weeks and he micro optimized it as well as he could and he did a really really nice job working with lasm... read more

As you may not know im getting busier with school. Im in 8th grade and in a few months i have a big exam that dictates where i go to high school. So that is why sometimes i cant work on the kernel even tho i have free time im just very tired. I still think in lasm so programing in my head is not a big deal.

This update as you saw we added acpi directory and today i did the pipe line in lasm and tomorrow the stable version will be launched. Then i will start working on 1.2.6 cause MJ_jakk and Harry-Youth started working on adding some syscalls and improving the filesystem. As well as Robert Claus just launched DedOS 0.4 ... read more

After one of the biggest updates for Q1-kernel, comes 2-3 updates to add some syscalls, to edit the filesystem, to make some micro optimizations and to make it more stable.

Right now the focus for V1.2.5 is to add more syscalls and make the filesystem more stable.
I hope you will enjoy the new syscalls and faster filesystem.

Special thanks to:
MJ_jakk
Harry-Youth

Metric (Lower is Better)	Linux (PREEMPT_RT)	FreeRTOS	seL4	L4Re/Fiasco.OC	DragonFly BSD (Est.)	Q1-Kernel
1. Inter-Process Communication (IPC)	2.0 – 4.5	1.5 – 3.0	0.5 – 1.0	0.3 – 0.7	1.0 – 2.0	0.80 – 1.3
2. Process Context Switch	1.5 – 3.0	1.0 – 2.5	0.8 – 1.8	0.7 – 1.4	1.5 – 3.0	1.5 – 2.0
3. Worst-Case Interrupt Latency (WCIL)	10 – 50	5 – 15	5 – 20	10 – 30	5 – 15	20 – 30
4. Process Creation Time	50 – 200	N/A	20 – 50	15 – 40	50 – 150	40 – 60
5. Syscall Overhead (Null Call)	0.2 – 0.4	N/A	0.1 – 0.3	0.1 – 0.3	0.2 – 0.4	0.2 – 0.3

The latest nightly update of Q1-kernel has the final version of Q1-kernel. This version is still in beta but everything that is part of the main code is finished. The image compiles and boots with no errors.

We have internet support trough a VM that uses virtual ether.
We have 60 linux syscalls and 28 posix syscalls.
Libc on the new OS that will come out.
And the most important context switcher that is proofed in Isabella, but more like a theory proofed so nothing very very complex but still that means its safe fast and smaller, only needing at lowest 2kb cpu buffer/log on every "Node", but that means more resets of the buffer/log but still fast. And at max 256kb cpu buffer/log on every "Node".... read more

For the last couple of days i was thinking for a fast and safe contex switcher, scheduler, thread scheduler.
As you may know Q1-kernel has a very new kind of core and thread control. The kernel runs on one core plus 2 threads (or 1 based on threads count) and the rest of cores and threads are separated in Nodes, more like a cluster with very fast communication. In this way every core has his own job and that means no core conflict.... read more

Ok so i just completed some things from the roadmap

1. Networking (still only ether) complete
2. Process management to have a new arhitecture planning
3. moreeee syscalls and support for more software complete
4. An OS complete still beta

Special thanks to Robert Claus for helping me with the OS and porting musl to it

I want to start with special thanks:
to MJ_jakk for helping me with the network driver
to Gabriel Nix for helping me with porting lasm to ARM, and giving me tips for assembly
to Harry-Youth for helping me with management the kernel
They are some skilled programmers that helped in redox, linux and ARM development

For the next big update here is the roadmap:
1. Networking (even if only ethernet) complete
2. Process management to have a new arhitecture planning
3. Moreeeeee syscalls and more support for software
4. An OS... read more

Kernel	Syscall Latency (µs)	Context Switch (ns)	IPC Round-trip (ns)	Minor Page Fault (ns/page)
Q1-kernel	0.2 – 0.3	230 – 250	800 – 900	2000 – 2500
Linux	0.2 – 0.4	150 – 250	700 – 1200	1000 – 3000
DragonFly BSD	0.3 – 0.5	200 – 300	800 – 1300	1500 – 3500
XNU (macOS)	0.6 – 0.9	400 – 600	1200 – 2000	2000 – 4000
Windows NT	1.0 – 1.5	500 – 700	1500 – 2500	2500 – 4500

With lasm 0.2 comes some big improvements with Q1-kernel. With lasm 0.2 we have xt and con instructions. Those 2 instructions can be used in register manipulation like instead of 4 lines with "block" instruction plus "main" manipulation you can easily do that xt. At the same time with con you can access cpu cores in separate registers without advance "block" instruction.

Enough with lasm lets start with Q1-kernel improvements in multi coring. As you may know Q1-kernel threats every separate core like a separate pc. So everything runs in a "cluster" with high speed messaging, The OS runs in on core then it gives instruction to each core about userspace processing. In this way there are no core conflicts. In this test every OS runs on the Qemu 10.1.1 version. We have linux vs DragonFly BSD vs Q1-kernel. The test is how fast can each one compile Q1-kernel... read more