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Huawei's LiteOS Internet of Things Operating System Is a Minuscule 10KB
Mark Wilson writes: Chinese firm Huawei today announces its IoT OS at an event in Beijing. The company predicts that within a decade there will be 100 billion connected devices and it is keen for its ultra-lightweight operating system to be at the heart of the infrastructure. Based on Linux, LiteOS weighs in at a mere 10KB — smaller than a Word document — but manages to pack in support for zero configuration, auto-discovery, and auto-networking. The operating system will be open for developers to tinker with, and is destined for use in smart homes, wearables, and connected vehicles. LiteOS will run on Huawei's newly announced Agile Network 3.0 Architecture and the company hopes that by promoting a standard infrastructure, it will be able to push the development of internet and IoT applications
Does it work with an esp8266? Does it work with the Arduino IDE?
everything will be, anyway. it will be embedded in every circuit. if tampered with, a signal will be sent. (The Sentinel?)
Seriously though, how can security be handled at that small of a foot print?
That's 3.05e-7 Libraries of Congress for those of us in the civilized world.
At 10k how much access control or encryption can it have?
If everything I own is going to be on the internet I want security and a patch mechanism designed in from the start.
How could it even be? Unix-like? maybe, but that's about it!
640k was enough after all.
The operating system will be open for developers to tinker with
and suddenly it becomes 10mb.
Buck Feta. You know what to do.
... because there's yet another open-source operating system for Internet of Desperate Hopes for New As-Yet-Unsaturated Markets devices! At this point, you could probably install a light bulb in every socket in your home, with no two light bulbs using the same "universal" OS, radio technology or communication protocol. We don't need /new/ projects like this, we need most of the ones currently in the market - including all the proprietary bullshit ones like Apple's PrisonKit - to die.
We was lucky if we had 4kb for the OS and the program code and the graphics and the sounds.
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
No mention of the license. "Tinker" isn't sufficient.
This is Huawei; the electronics arm of the PLA.
Not touching any of their work without a full open source BSD style license.
Neither will anyone else.
Huawei LiteOs?
or just this one, repackaged/rebranded/whatever:
http://lanterns.eecs.utk.edu/software/liteos/
?
This story seems to confirm my ongoing claim that a minimal Windows install taking 15Gb+ of disk space and using over 1GB of ram just to run is BEYOND crazy. ...but then I'm also old enough to remember when a bootable MsDOS environment used up about 1/3 of a 1.2mb floppy.
Now get off my lawn.
the kernel is > 2mb nowadays. how did they get in into 10K?
-------
1. Enjoy your job
2. Make lots of money
3. Work within the law
Choose any two.
They must use middle-out compression.
..seems to be forgotten
Old time programmers remember squeezing every bit of performance out of a system
I remember doing image processing on a 4MHz 8088, in 1986, in assembly
Modern processors are INSANELY powerful..yet, most of the power is wasted on layers and layers of crap that incompetent programmers don't even realize is there
We need to re-discover efficiency in programming
the kernel is > 2mb nowadays. how did they get in into 10K?
Lossy compression.
#DeleteChrome
The claims are ludicrous on their face. No Linux-based has ever been as small as 10KiB. Even the earliest distributions of Linux-based operating systems in the early 1990s required a couple of floppies.
Does anyone remember the tear-down of Huawei's router OS, presented at DEFCON 20? Why would you let those people anywhere near your hardware?
The only code guaranteed to be secure is code you didn't include. If typical code, Windows for example, has one serious bug per 5,000 lines of code, this should have approximately 0 serious bugs.
Sadly not sure a word document is even a fair comparison anymore. A "Hello World" document is roughly 12kb alone. You can open it with a .zip tool to see why. It's chocked full of xml and metadata files.
Actually - it's just 0.009 kb
https://github.com/OIOTC/Liteos
And also other tradeoffs. It is fashionable for some geeks to cry about the amount of disk space that stuff takes, but it always seems devoid of context and consideration, as though you could have the exact same performance/setup in a tiny amount of space if only programmers "tried harder" or something. However you do some research, and it turns out to all be tradeoffs, and often times the tradeoff to use more system resources is a good one. Never mind just capabilities/features, but there can be reasons to have abstractions, managed environments, and so on.
It is easier with something simpler, not something smaller. When you start doing extreme optimization for size, as in this case, you are going to do it at the expense of many things, checks being one of them. If you want to have good security, particularly for something that can be hit with completely arbitrary and hostile input like something on the network, you want to do good data checking and sanitization. Well guess what? That takes code, takes memory, takes cycles. You start stripping everything down to basics, stuff like that may go away.
What's more, with really tiny code sizes, particularly for complex items like an OS, what you are often doing is using assembly, or at best C, which means that you'd better be really careful, but there is a lot of room to fuck up. You mess up one pointer and you can have a major vulnerability. Now you go and use a managed language or the like and the size goes up drastically... but of course that management framework can deal with a lot of issues.
Why is the "internet of things" still a thing?
Is this for people who miss the good ole days of polio and small pox?
In 10K? If anything, it's Linux-inspired. I joined by ~1.2.x (1995), and the minimum specs were already ~2MB RAM.
I don't buy into this IoT gimmick. I looked at an Internet fridge last time I was in the market. It seemed to add more cost, complexity and potential reliability issues for no real gain. Instead I got a regular fridge. Still keeps my food cold, and I never have the administration overhead of having to manage it.
We need to re-discover efficiency in programming
Why? There's a reason programming has become inefficient, and that's because in most cases it doesn't need to be. You can't fight evolution
To this old timer this sure ain't a case of "evolution"
It's much more closer to DE-volution
Something evolves to be better
But when something becomes worse, it DE volves
Muchas Gracias, Señor Edward Snowden !
Where's the download link?
Area51 - We are watching...
So in 2011 back when LiteOS was funded by the american national science foundation a team of chinese researchers released a 17 megabyte version. I'm impressed by how much redundant code was removed. 10 print world; 20 init usb; 30 ' "it's working perfectly; 40 halt ? is the new source code? I'm salivating to look over the 17 megabyte code before it was backsourced to china after being paid for by the american government.
Future Assassin
Slashdot
May 20 2015
by TheSpoom (715771) Uncaring Linux user here. I have nothing to add to this but please continue. *munches popcorn*
After reading your comments, i start to realise it's not an insult.
What should be in the IoT-kernel to be secure forever? I think it should only be able to connect to a secure gateway (and nothing else). And the state of the art is a moving target. So if the protocol, its implementation and the version is safe should be determined by the gateway.
They left out the security patches to the original kernel.
As a former employee of a technology company that did business with Huawei I can tell you the U.S. government banned all purchases of Huawei hardware for a time and prevented Sprint from building a wireless network with their hardware. Also, all of the Huawei software had to be routed directly through a government agency with source code to check it for security holes. Now I wasn't privy to any of the results but I haven't read any news about the government changing their stance on them..
... when even a 9$ computer has a 1GHz CPU, 512M ram and 4G flash... Functionality is more important than OS size.
I'm guessing that joke's a lot funnier outside of the United States.
"I like to lick butts!" by MobileTatsu-NJG (#32700246) (Score:5, Informative)
Remember that QNX demo disk? Single floppy booting into OS with networking, GUI, terminal emulator, web browser. Alright, so it's a compressed 1440kB image and it took a while to decompress. But still, it gave you a web browser. And really, that's most of what I need and already more than I want. I don't *want* to need a web browser for what I like to do. There should also be a decent text editor, a programming language of choice (C has always been large-ish even without any supporting libraries, certainly compared to, say, turbo pascal--I could fit the latter's compiler and system library plus a text editor and room to spare on a 360kB floppy if I lost the BGI library from the system set, never used that anyway) and of course a little room to work with.
Anyway, there are plenty more examples all with different tradeoffs. The tradeoff with "modern" OSes is very much not space optimisation, nor even memory optimisation or cycle preservation. Disk, RAM, CPU, even GPU these days, are considered "free" resources and are therefore spent with wild abandon, and redmond is far from the only culprit. It is said that developer time is always more precious, but I say it doesn't if you multiply these hidden costs by the number of users. That is before considering that many developers are in fact idiots in disguise. For a widely-used project it really is a good idea to make sure it still runs reasonably well on slower and less resourceful hardware. But "the industry" disagrees.
The approach taken does mean you need to buy more hardware for basically no gain in essential function with depressing regularity. These days even just to update your browser. And you have to update your browser because so many websites have "upgraded" to new, incompatible, ways of doing the same old thing, again with no discernible increase in essential functionality.
Even the bells and whistles gained aren't worth it: Lots of slow javascript requiring superfast javascript interpreters to reinvent basic things that used to work fine, like presenting a bit of text and some pictures, add a couple of hyperlinks. It's just that "everyone" uses the same bloated and slow javascript-laden website kits. So we're in a situation where we're standing on the shoulders of those that came before, but while the result is slow and ponderous, only the amount of resources required counts as giant.
As someone not grey-haired yet, I see a lot of room for improvement here.
When you remove GNU from GNU/Linux, you are only left with 10KB.
Thus proving this story is accurate.
It's only > 2mb if you include tons of drivers and functionality that they probably stripped. Since it's a IoT for their own hardware they probably only have support for the very tiny subset of hardware that they have and drivers are a big part of the kernel.
As well as cutting down the kernel as much as possible they have a compressed boot image. That has to be loaded into RAM and decompressed to be much larger before use.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
I don't buy into this Internal Combustion Engine gimmick. I looked at a self-powered vehicle last time I was in the market. It seemed to add more cost, complexity and potential reliability issues for no real gain. Instead I got a regular stagecoach. Still transports people and goods, and I never have the administration overhead of having to manage it.
No room for any security...
"If any question why we died, Tell them because our fathers lied."
Can it run Crysis?
good for you. I want sophisticated software based digital controls in all my appliances that are run on the same $8 internet connected computer that I can replace, flash, customize, update, optimize for my lifestyle, for my local utility programs and incentives, renewable power systems, energy storage, peak demand reduction, etc.
You will always be able to buy the cheap refrigerator with a poorly controlled compressor. unfortunately that's also the model with poor insulation, bad stripping, and a nasty compressor. Also the administrative overhead of figuring the additional energy and operating cost you waste from this choice is very small. Maybe you can spend this saved time investigating your hypothesis about the complexity and potential reliability of digital controls.
a small footprint is easier with no security.
2011, 17Meg . Is that even the same liteOS ? By the description it seems that yes. http://www.liteos.net/ https://code.google.com/p/lite...
I don't see Linux being mentioned in the Huawei press release. Where is the original source? It seems very unlikely that its Linux based. It would more likely be like FreeRTOS or Keil RTX.
I don't buy into this Internal Combustion Engine gimmick. I looked at a self-powered vehicle last time I was in the market. It seemed to add more cost, complexity and potential reliability issues for no real gain. Instead I got a regular stagecoach. Still transports people and goods, and I never have the administration overhead of having to manage it.
Yeah, ha ha, but very few people actually owned their own stagecoach, whereas nearly everybody already has a fridge.
But kudos for shoehorning in a car analogy.
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it
But think of all the viruses that poor Word document needs to support
Maybe... but executable binary code of any kind don't compress well enough to be "much larger" after decompressed, regardless of the method of compression.
Only an idiot would buy a fridge. I build my own.
I look forward to hacking into your $8 Internet connection to make your stupid fridge fuck your toaster and have your stupid smartphone video it and post it to your stupid facebook account
IoT is for idiots who don't realize you don't need a fucking Internet connection for a fridge. What a fucking waste of technology. I hope your fridge gets a virus and you get diarrhea
Now put a embedded system into some dildos? THEN you have some modern IoT shit, bro
This is the NSA, we're gonna geet U h@x0r5! Also, what is a h@x0r5?
In a sense, that's precisely it. They made it smaller by removing things. So yeah, lossy compression!
I can't imagine this OS has anything resembling libraries or runtimes on it...one of those cheapass modems you can telnet into will seem luxurious in comparison. How much need will there be for an OS like this in the future when you can already run a full desktop OS on a $25 single-board computer?
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
Pada dasarnya ,poduck yang sudah terkenal bisa mudah di cari atau di jual di pasar ,spermarket,moll , atau di toko-toko. Kalo anda mengagap seperti itu ,saya rasa kurang pas.Disini kami sebagai distributor PT NASA [NATURAL NUSANTARA] menegaskan ,,Bahwa produck produck kami tidak dijual di toko toko atau agen -agen pada umumnya.Produck kami hanya dijual di agen-agen / distributor resmi PT NASA [NATURAL NUSANTARA].Mengapa demikian ,karena itu sudah menjadi kesepakatan marketing dari pt nasa.
Disetiap distributor PT NASA pasti mempunya no urut atau nomor keangngotaan.Fungsi no keangotaan tersebut untuk mengecek jika terjadi komplain para konsumen bisa melaporkanya kepihak marketing pemasaran PT NASA.[NATURAL NUSANTARA]. Untuk itu anda harus bisa lebih selectif kalo ingin membeli produc Crystal X yang asli,, karena masih banyak yang ketipu dengan produck tiruan kami.lebih lengkapnya klic di sini. jual crystal x asli
My fridge wasn't cheap, it was merely cheaper than the exact same thing with the Internet in it. There is no administrative overhead, I've never had to administer any fridge I've owned in 30 years. Ask your friends that have Smart TVs how many times they use the smart features. I did, and the answer across the board was "once when I first got it, then never again").
Support for IPv6 brings it to 374 MB.
So because people buy cars then every invention ever is awesome? Good argument...
The current car isn't much like the first self-powered versions. But even larger is the difference between the preexisting society and that which was shaped by the ubiquitous car. So the analogy isn't merely that it's an invention, but that it's an invention that in some form, sooner or later, is guaranteed to necome commonplace, widespread and yet again transformative to society, yet rejected by some of the early evaluators.
it is probably a boot loader.
Apple ][+ had an OS that was 4KB, it was a boot loader too. The default behavior was to launch the 8KB AppleSoft interpreter. If you happened to have a Disk ][ unit installed it would digress into loading 6KB of AppleDOS into RAM from a 2KB ROM on the DISK controller before seeding the low level globals of AppleSoft to patch interpreter's command dispatcher to handle DOS commands from the CLI, and then calling into the interpreters main loop.
Kids these days.... No appreciation for how much quality work a few KB of assembly language code can do.
The largest Atari 2600 games were less than 10KB, most were 4KB, until bank swapping became popular and that included ALL game assets! Most NES games were less than 16KB of executable code.
Commodore 64 KERNAL was only 8k.
Though that kernel didn't do TCP/IP networking.
Nevertheless, there *are* small opensource OS able to pull network on a C64 (e.g.: Contiki-os).
Huawei's LiteOS is competing against them.
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
Well, actually the *chinese* backdoor is the one which is hardware embed into the chip that runs the LiteOS.
The 9KB you're looking at are the *russian* backdoor that they managed to sneak in without anybody noticing.
(The remain 1K was written by a coordinated effort of european spying agency... hey not everyone has the ressource of the big player, some need to pool together)
The US you ask? They are busy introducing a new law that will make eaves-dropping access mandatory on all IoT gizmos.
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
but that it's an invention that in some form, sooner or later, is guaranteed to necome commonplace, widespread and yet again transformative to society, yet rejected by some of the early evaluators.
Crap. Based on what? Your opinion?
Not every invention becomes commonplace, in fact most are failures. I'm yet to hear any argument why an Internet fridge is better than a regular fridge. The fact that we actually have Internet Fridges right now, and nobody I know has one, is a pretty clear indication that this invention is less like the car and more like the 3D TV, the Curved TV, or the Segway.
It was about the IoT in general, rather than the networked fridges as they exist today on the market. The first cars sucked, and maybe the first IoT fridges don't offer much plus either. Cars were an ultimately accepted invention, because they provided what a lot of people want: reliable individual mobility without horseshit and having to keep large animals. Even more so, networked objects are destined to be part of people's life, because the marginal cost of sensors, pattern recognition and being networked approaches zero, but there's bound to be applications, possibly including monitoring and improving the domestic segment of the foodchain, that bring benefit.
Well you keep believing the dream. I have a Web TV you might like to buy....
I don't have friends with smart TVs, I do have friends working on refrigerators that can coordinate fast demand response with the grid, thus enabling the second or third largest appliance of every dwelling in the country to actually contribute services that increase the predictability and reliability while decreasing the cost of distribution and generation. Not bad for $8 of electronics.
It's ok to be ignorant. It's not ok to get angry and lash out.
Very true. I have not yet mastered multi-stage sealed vapor compression technology yet.
Yeah until it breaks, then it costs $150/hour to get an expert to repair it. Your friends must've missed the first day of Engineering school where they teach you KISS.
this thinking is comical. I'd really like to see the the contents of your root cellar to validate your choice of a vapor compression cycle machine to store your perishables. And I could take this in a thousand other directions to demonstrate your absurdity. Oh what's that you're just making some obscene argument based off inconsistent personal values? yeah. right. While you dig holes to refrigerate your eggs and vegetables (or more likely just proceed in a state of self delusion), options will be made available to the rest of us that leverage technology to save money, reduce operating costs, and shockingly, improve reliability.
You can maintain your crude systems with high operating costs. I certainly won't infringe on your freedom to make bad choices as long as I don't have to subsidize them anyway.
Conversely, you seem to think technology is the solution to everything. Just because you can add technology doesn't mean you should.
An example is a German oven (no Godwin jokes here). The Germans make the best ovens, and a lot of them still have mechanical controls. Why do you think this is? Surely digital is better? And why not make a smartphone app for them? What could be better than that?
A Swiss watch?
The humble bicycle?
Why do you think these things exist?
Sure Technology is great, but not it's not the default answer for EVERYTHING! ALL THE TIME! When you grow up you might appreciate this a bit more.
I think most German appliances have fully digital controls, especially EU-style convection ovens. I've already articulated the benefits to society of connected, intelligent energy intensive appliances. You've just ignored those benefits due to some kind of personal grudge.
... and you'll pay money and others will save. I support your choice, why don't you support mine?
Our energy grid is growing increasingly complex and unpredictable, "stupid" devices have obvious drawbacks for grid management, demand response, electricity markets, etc. Paired with distributed storage and generation, coordinating electrical usage can dramatically reduce the generation, transmission, and distribution costs during times of peak demand and minimum demand. We'll eventually have market-based pricing that will take all this into account
I've already articulated the benefits to society of connected, intelligent energy intensive appliances. You've just ignored those benefits due to some kind of personal grudge.
You articulated what you think are benefits and ignored any downsides (Complexity!) I tend to be a bit more cynical, mainly because I've heard it all before. 3D-TV anyone?
Our energy grid is growing increasingly complex and unpredictable,
So your solution is more complexity and unpredictability? Also power generation isn't complex, it's fairly well understood. Once people get over the nuclear power boogie man, we just ramp up generation. Problem solved.
"stupid" devices have obvious drawbacks for grid management, demand response, electricity markets, etc.
Yes but many other benefits, namely simplicity to produce, maintain and repair.
Paired with distributed storage and generation, coordinating electrical usage can dramatically reduce the generation, transmission, and distribution costs during times of peak demand and minimum demand. We'll eventually have market-based pricing that will take all this into account ... and you'll pay money and others will save.
You'll pay more for all your devices because they'll all need Network adapters and processors, and software, and OSes, and updates and monitoring and logging....
And for most average Joes, they'll need to pay someone to come over and set it up, and then come back and fix it when it invariably stops working properly.
I support your choice, why don't you support mine?
Fill your boots. If you want an Internet Fridge more power to you, my original claim was that I don't buy into, and I think many others won't either.