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Microsoft Built Its Own Custom Linux Kernel For Its New IoT Service (techcrunch.com)

Posted by BeauHD on from the do-it-yourself dept.

At a small press event in San Francisco, Microsoft today announced the launch of a secure end-to-end IoT product that focuses on microcontroller-based devices -- the kind of devices that use tiny and relatively low-powered microcontrollers (MCUs) for basic control or connectivity features. TechCrunch reports: At the core of Azure Sphere is a new class of certified MCUs. As Microsoft president and chief legal officer Brad Smith stressed in today's announcement, Microsoft will license these new Azure Sphere chips for free, in hopes to jump-start the Azure Sphere ecosystem. Because it's hard to secure a device you can't update or get telemetry from, it's no surprise that these devices will feature built-in connectivity. And with that connectivity, these devices can also connect to the Azure Sphere Security Service in the cloud. For the first time ever, Microsoft is launching a custom Linux kernel and distribution: the Azure Sphere OS. It's an update to the kind of real-time operating systems that today's MCUs often use.

Why use Linux? "With Azure Sphere, Microsoft is addressing an entirely new class of IoT devices, the MCU," Rob Lefferts, Microsoft's partner director for Windows enterprise and security told me at the event. "Windows IoT runs on microprocessor units (MPUs) which have at least 100x the power of the MCU. The Microsoft-secured Linux kernel used in the Azure Sphere IoT OS is shared under an OSS license so that silicon partners can rapidly enable new silicon innovations." And those partners are also very comfortable with taking an open-source release and integrating that with their products. To get the process started, MediaTek is producing the first set of these new MCUs. These are low-powered, single-core ARM-A7 systems that run at 500MHz and include WiFi connectivity as well as a number of other I/O options.

28 of 199 comments (clear)

  1. Secure? LOLOL! by b0s0z0ku · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Microcontrollers on the Internet, talking to your network via someone else's (Microsoft's) computer. Secure? Laughable.

    The only way I'd use most "IoT" devices is if they were able to talk directly to my devices, ideally using IPv6 and strong encryption. Let's roll out IPv6, have enough addresses for every device on Earth and maybe on the Moon too, and cut out the need for "cloud" middlemen spying on everything.

  2. Yet another 3rd party half assed fork attempt by nyet · · Score: 2, Interesting

    So Microsoft released a custom kernel because the kernel maintainers wouldn't accept a second rate, poorly written patch set?

    How will they track upstream changes?

    1. Re:Yet another 3rd party half assed fork attempt by Provocateur · · Score: 2

      Exactly. Which part of embrace, extend, exclamation point are they on? So when does the blamestorming begin? Places, everyone!

      --
      WARNING: Smartphones have side effects--most of them undocumented.
    2. Re: Yet another 3rd party half assed fork attempt by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Informative

      It is not forked from kernel repro. Just a bunch of patches.
      Main kernel is clearly 3.10 WTF!
      Opened one patch. Has no clear description in parhes, just basic header is there. Patch has 10000 insertions, clearly unmaintainable or a patch from a squashed internal tree. Needs to be split.
      Didn't look into code, these problems made me disinterested.

      Opened

  3. Microsoft-secured Linux kernel by Isomorphic · · Score: 5, Insightful

    "Microsoft-secured Linux kernel."

    I don't have the space to list all the things wrong with that phrase.

    1. Re:Microsoft-secured Linux kernel by Billly+Gates · · Score: 4, Interesting

      Or the bubble they live in is in the office where the boss loves Active Directory and win32 software and need something that talks and integrates well with their ecosystem.

      You know not everyone is blessed to be a bearded hipster making $180,000 a year in Silicon Valley and working from a coffee shop all day while working in their hip node.js frameworks talking to the NOSQL database for a company that doesn't make any money.

      In my world you support what the employers tells you to support or you're fired and replaced with someone who will. That is a fact.

      These days I would choose .NET over Java if I had to choose anyway as Oracle is more evil and proprietary than MS is ... if those were my two options.

      --
      http://saveie6.com/
    2. Re:Microsoft-secured Linux kernel by Billly+Gates · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Sigh. Yes a Nokia 820.

      Doing what I can being a SME on Office 365 and SCCM now to earn a living being envious I didn't stick with programming and Linux like I once was this past decade and being bitter about those who are luckier indeed! I think i am a little old now to start over and learn node.js and get a job at a .com.

      --
      http://saveie6.com/
    3. Re:Microsoft-secured Linux kernel by ChunderDownunder · · Score: 2

      The Sopris whitepaper mentions "renewable security" running some sort of secure fortress to prevent attacks such as Broadcom wifi from compromising the system as a whole.

      Are Mediatek and MS willing to publish the source to this inner firmware on github, along with flashing instructions? I wouldn't think so. So put on your tin-foil hat, remember the Intel management engine Minix scandal and be very afraid!

    4. Re:Microsoft-secured Linux kernel by phantomfive · · Score: 3, Interesting

      Node.js is dead. Pay attention to Web Assembly, that is the future.

      --
      "First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
    5. Re:Microsoft-secured Linux kernel by LostMyBeaver · · Score: 5, Interesting

      Ok... I'm going to bite.

      I honestly have no problems with other platforms... except maybe Java... and that's because I simply feel completely disconnected from the platform when I'm using Java. I spent 30 more wasted minutes of my life yesterday trying to make WebStart... well web start. But it seems that Oracle seems to think making WebStart work in Chrome is a waste of time.

      I have chosen C# and .NET for many reasons for my current project, I can honestly see no real downside to the platform. It is completely open, it's very often community driven. The tools are far more advanced than for any other platform. The performance isn't quite JavaScript (currently the fastest language out there for anything but static code) but I don't think it could ever be as slow as Python no matter how bad the .NET project messes up. .NET supports many different languages with integration between languages handled as a native feature of the .NET platform as opposed to the who SWIG lifestyle. It probably is the most versatile platform ever made for handling more than just one programming language. Sure, using the C ABI is pretty powerful too, but there has never been a standard for handling object oriented programming that way.

      I also use .NET because it's lovely for coding on Mac and Linux.

      I owned a Windows Phone for a while. It was pretty ok. I think it was extremely well made... with the exception of Microsoft making the stupid ass mistake of trying to force .NET down everyone's throat. No one wanted to rewrite their entire system to support Windows Phone. Even Apple didn't reach critical mass until they released ObjC++ allowing existing code bases to be ported to Mac pretty cleanly,

      I never considered Silverlight an option for anything. I did however write the original port of Flash to Qt for the Qt Embedded platform on Linux. I never liked Flash either. I would rather just extend the web standards to support the features I was missing. I also don't like the video tag. With WebAssembly and WebGL, I can't imagine why any company would ever choose to try and standardize a codec when they could have supported a TPM for web kind of thing and simply supply their own. I'm pretty sure Netflix, HBO, YouTube and others will lose hundreds of millions a year by using Flash or the HTML5 video.

      The only problem I could ever see to .NET was that people seem to dislike it because it's a Microsoft thing.

      I'm heading to Microsoft Build next month because I feel that .NET is worth investing in. I expect it to be around for a while. I expect it to be supported for a while. I expect it to be constantly modernized for quite a while. I expect it remain one of the most open platforms for a while (permissive licensed only, no so called free GPL code). I am hoping to learn a lot of stuff there.

      Oh.. my old bubble was the Qt bubble.

      I guess you're in the Python bubble?

    6. Re:Microsoft-secured Linux kernel by fisted · · Score: 4, Funny

      that is the future

      For the next how many weeks?

      --
      CLI paste? paste.pr0.tips!
  4. How long will the battery last. by MountainLogic · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Seriously, an A7 and Linux for an IoT thermostat or glass break sensor? Linux is wonderful and all for servers and even little routers, but real IoT devices live on a dirt cheap processor in a few kbytes, not Mbytes or GBytes and last for a year on a single battery. FreeRTOS that just received support from Amazon is a likely solution for IoT. A survey by EE Times suggests that new embedded projects are adopting FreeRTOS and a slightly higher rate for new products than even Linux (page 63) while embedded linux still has a small lead for existing projects. I'll bet this pig ships will mono and C# built into it and that is why they pushing linux.

    1. Re:How long will the battery last. by anon+mouse-cow-aard · · Score: 3, Insightful
      It depends on the kind of software you want to run. The thing being described is like a raspberrypi zero, although the zero is twice the clock, so my guess would be four times the power? power consumption is something like:

      https://www.jeffgeerling.com/b...

      If you really need lowest power consumption, then something like freeRTOS makes a lot of sense. So yeah, it will not last for days on a coin-cell battery. But for applications where a power is not a constraint (inside an appliance, a wall wart, a solar cell, or some other kind of powered box) with a 5$ part you can run normal linux software on it, and it consumes about 200ma while tranceiving wifi. If this thing is running @ 500MHz, it could be only 50 ma.

      tradeoff is relatively normal software environment in linux vs. hyper specialized rare coders and 1% of the application ecosystems available for RTOS.

    2. Re:How long will the battery last. by ChunderDownunder · · Score: 3, Insightful

      What battery?

      The promotional video shows a smart fridge.

    3. Re:How long will the battery last. by religionofpeas · · Score: 4, Insightful

      but real IoT devices live on a dirt cheap processor in a few kbytes, not Mbytes or GBytes and last for a year on a single battery.

      Not if they are wifi-connected. That sucks power. Also, running a full TCP/IP stack with all the bells and whistles isn't going to work very well on a few kB. Sure, you can cram something in there that will work to some degree, but how is it going to withstand a well engineered attack for instance ?

  5. Microsoft's Position by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

    "Linux is worse than cancer"

        -- Steve Ballmer

    1. Re:Microsoft's Position by Gadget_Guy · · Score: 4, Insightful

      It seems that Microsoft has moved on since those days. It's a pity that so many on /. can't do the same and are fixated with how things were 20 years ago.

    2. Re: Microsoft's Position by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Informative

      Except they haven't moved on. ExFAT etc. The new Windows Admin Centre 'web' interface only fully works with Edge. Etc. Same old.

  6. Linux has won! by PineHall · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Microsoft producing a Linux OS that it will distribute and maintain is amazing! Microsoft has been infected with the Linux cancer. Linux world domination?

    1. Re:Linux has won! by Gadget_Guy · · Score: 2

      So that was what Trump was talking about when he tweeted "Mission Accomplished".

  7. I'm confused. by fahrbot-bot · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Is this the "Embrace" or "Extend" step in the sequence?

    --
    It must have been something you assimilated. . . .
  8. Has MS ever heard of raspberry pi? by anon+mouse-cow-aard · · Score: 2
    uh... from the fine article: "To get the process started, MediaTek is producing the first set of these new MCUs. These are low-powered, single-core ARM-A7 systems that run at 500MHz and include WiFi connectivity as well as a number of other I/O options." so... pretty much exactly the specs of the original raspberry pi. Why didn't they just use pi's and raspbian? What did they do a custom kernel for? I've used the original pi as a dual-stack ipv4 & v6 router with iptables firewall. It runs any security stack you want... What did they actually need to build? I expect whatever it was could just easily have been built as a debian application package (like avahi say, or dhcpd, or apache) rather than into the kernel. The project does not make much sense with the information given.

    Maybe they're doing some extra power management?

  9. Re:Why not one for the BSDs? by Billly+Gates · · Score: 2

    Azure already has FreeBSD. Infact, I used FreeBSD before I started using Linux on Hyper-V from my Windows 8.1 box due to the excellent guest tools donated by Microsoft from the Azure team. PfSense uses them too to set up my virtual routers in my hyper-V lab at home.

    The reason they used Linux is because everyone else uses Linux. Linux is most understood by those who write such software so the knowledge base is strongest and familiarity.

    Funny, this was the argument for Windows 20 years ago ironically. BSD never took off at the same level and only Microsoft knows the Windows kernel.

    --
    http://saveie6.com/
  10. Custom IoT kernel? Why? by mveloso · · Score: 2

    The only reason I can think of to use your own kernel fork is because you can power optimize it.

    For example, if you know your device only checks in every second and you only need .5 second resolution for your sensor then you can put your system to sleep and use an interrupt line attached to your sensor to wake everything up. Then you can run as much CPU as you need to fire up the radio, send the packet, and shut off.

    At that point you can also make your system 'almost realtime' by using the transmission window to receive data/commands/etc.

    Do you really need something running at 500 mhz? I mean damn, how much stuff you do expect to come off the wire?

  11. Scorpion on the frog's back, crossing the river. by MrKaos · · Score: 2

    After kicking all of the other kids out of it's sandbox and not letting them play all the other kids got together and built their own sandbox. Now Microsoft want to play in their sandbox because all the other kids are having such a good time. I wonder how long it will take for Microsoft to kick all the other kids out of the sandbox this time?

    And the morale to the story:

    Halfway across the river the scorpion stung the frog and as they were drowning the frog said "Why???" to which the scorpion replied "It's in my nature".

    --
    My ism, it's full of beliefs.
  12. Moved on by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Informative

    > It seems that Microsoft has moved on since those days.

    It seems that their propaganda is working on you.

    C'mon. Think. Think a bit harder. Microsoft's business model hinges on making their customers dependent. Free software, OTOH, thrives on making customers/users free.

    This doesn't mix well.

  13. 2002 Business Case for Microsoft:Green envy &s by NZheretic · · Score: 3, Informative

    Meanwhile back in 2002 from What's the Business Case for Microsoft and Open Source?

  14. Nothing new by NewYork · · Score: 2

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

    --
    Casteism