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Interview with Jay Michaelson of Wasabi Systems
Gentu writes "The main commercial company behind NetBSD is Wasabi Systems. The company has contributed advances and big chunks of code to the open source project, while they do offer a boxed release of NetBSD. However, their main business for the company is the embedded market and NetBSD is marketed as an embedded OS. OSNews talked to the Vice President of Wasabi Systems, Jay Michaelson. Linux in the embedded market is also discussed."
Since the first three posts (not by me, I hasten to add) were all modded down to -1 in less than a minute, I'll try to post something more worthwhile.
Wasabi Systems offers three main components:
Maguro
This is their embedded kernel, using a customized NetBSD kernel with extensions designed to allow better low-power operation and lower latency for real-time applications.
Uni
This is a custom, proprietary API supplied by Wasabi Systems that provides a variety of functionality for embedded systems, including interfacing with FieldNet devices such as the Kohada2010F and Tako ABV modules.
Ika
This is another proprietary API layer from Wasabi, which allows the use of WinCE applications on their systems without recompiling, thanks to a branch of the WINE project (called SAKE) that adds compatible system calls for over 95% of WinCE library routines.
It's a wonderful company run by a bunch of great guys - I wish them all the best.
1. NetBSD is the OS of choice at Wasabi Systems. How is the embedded version of NetBSD stacks up in performance when compared to VXWorks, Embedded Linux, QNX, WindowsCE and others?
Jay Michaelson: Wasabi Certified NetBSD is far more adaptable, powerful, and affordable than VxWorks. It is easy to port to new hardware, has a much more powerful networking stack (we know of VxWorks users who have ripped out their TCP stack and plugged in NetBSD's.), and is free from Wind River's cumbersome fees. Moreover, with Wasabi certification and testing, Wasabi NetBSD is guaranteed just like other commercial operating systems.
Regarding Linux, the two main differentiators are portability and licensing. NetBSD, due to its modular portability layer, can be ported much faster than Linux; three weeks compared with three months in some cases. In addition, NetBSD is free of the GPL, which scares many companies because it requires that all changes to the kernel be made open source. With NetBSD, there are no such requirements.
WinCE offers good application support, but the footprint is large and the reliability not up to par. QNX is a good OS but has lacked the penetration and support to really make a mark. OEMs want operating systems that their engineers can use, and providing a POSIX API and Unix environment make that possible.
2. NetBSD is a full blown Unix. Does it actually scale down as well as it scales up? What are the minimum specs that NetBSD can run and operate on?
Jay Michaelson: We can get a usable kernel in under 1 Meg. As is well known, NetBSD can run on just about anything -- there are still some consultants making a living off of VAX support. We've yet to see a commercial application where NetBSD has not been able to scale down adequately.
3. Up to now, where are your partners/clients are mostly lean to: Keeping their version of NetBSD closed or opening their modified sources? How do you see the embedded market/community reacting on open source?
Jay Michaelson: Customers have varied. One recent deal required that the code be kept secret for six months and then released -- this is, in a way, the best of both worlds, because it will eventually be supported by the open source community, but in the meantime the customer gets the competitive advantage. Other customers want immediate release; they want to be integrated into the NetBSD source tree right away. And still others commit the basic port but keep some of the bells and whistles private. Wasabi itself has created suites of products and add-ons to NetBSD that are our intellectual property, and which we license to customers.
I think there is real, and justified, concern about the GPL. We're now past the initial phase, when FUD from various sources confused the issue. People now understand that you're not risking your company security by running Linux on your servers. But at the same time, most of our customers are quite aware that the GPL requires hundreds of thousands of dollars' worth of IP to be shared, and they don't like it. It's a real concern in embedded.
4. What is your opinion on embedded Linux? Can it become as popular and successful as it is today in server space?
Jay Michaelson: The license gets in the way. You're not changing the kernel in the server space, and Linux runs well, and of course it is widely supported. So the GPL is not an issue. In embedded, the GPL is always an issue. There are so many uncertainties, and such high costs, that the GPL really has hamstrung Linux's advance in embedded. Add to that the portability gap between Linux on the one hand and NetBSD on the other. If you can get Unix functional
You're thinking of scaling the wrong way. They can scale the system down to have a smaller foot print (thus the whole embedded approach of the business). Last I heard, NetBSD didn't do SMP though that may have changed since the last time I played with it (a quick search on the netbsd site indicates that smp was only recently merged into -current so expecting it to scale with linux is likely out of the question...try FreeBSD for that).
Routers, printers
;-) /over and out
The IP stack of NetBSD is really really good. Plus the NetBSD source code is a beauty. Welldocumented all they way. In Linux, particulary drivers, the code contains undocumented statements like
p[20] = 0x80;
In NetBSD it would have a define, or at least a comment....
But I'm biased after 3 years of various Network-startups with NetBSD as a base. Also, my most of my knowledge comes from 2.0.something Linux-kernel.. But from what I've seen. The style-guide of Linux-drivers hasn't changed that much...
Last I heard, NetBSD didn't do SMP though that may have changed since the last time I played with it
The SMP support is shaping up nicely. I have it running on a dual processor SparcStation 20 which recent versions of the Linux kernel wont even compile on, let alone boot. Both my i386 machines are uniprocessor (laptops), so I can't comment on the performance on commodity hardware.
Chris
You have some proof of "moving to finer grained locking"
I assume that was a question or accusation rather than a simple statement. Well, the proof is on the tech-smp mailing list where Paul Kranenburg and Frank van der Linden have both posted recent commments on locking improvements. Some subsystems are still not guaranteed to be OK with these finer grained locks, but the fact that testing is being carried out by switching the BKL off entirely is encouraging.
As for open source developers doing things at the their own pace and priority, I get the impression that Frank van der Linden is working to some sort of Wasabi schedule. Not that it means we'll see enterprise class SMP in a stable NetBSD release anytime soon, but it suggests someone is being paid to expend a fair proportion of their time on it.
Chris
Do you have a
Jay's the legal and publications guy, cut him some slack. He certainly gave straight answers to the questions he was asked.
What technical questions where you hoping to hear answered?
Perhaps Slashdot should do its own interview with a Wasabi engineer? (Perry Metzger, Christos Zoulas, Allen Briggs, Jason Thorpe...)
Do you have a
As for the
Do you have a