Embedded Xinu #
History of Xinu and Embedded Xinu #
Embedded Xinu is an educational and research bare-metal operating system used here at Marquette University. Xinu originated at Purdue University with Dr. Douglas Comer in the 1980s for the LSI-11 platform, it has now been ported to a variety of platforms. Dr. Brylow brought Xinu over to Marquette University in 2006 and ported it to the MIPS architecture and called it Embedded Xinu. This was the first port to a RISC based architecture. Today, Embedded Xinu has been ported to run on MIPS platforms such as the Linksys WRT54GL and Linksys WRT54G. In addition to the MIPS architecture, Embedded Xinu is currently being ported to the ARM architecture on the Raspberry Pi 3B+. Embedded Xinu is being used in numerous class at Marquette University such as Networks and Internets, Compilers, Operating Systems, and Computer Security.
My Work #
My work focuses on porting Embedded Xinu on the up-and-coming RISC-V architecture. The RISC-V architecture has many benefits over other architectures that have come before it – mainly RISC-V is open source and not owned by one coperation. This open-source nature makes it friendly for companies and hobbists to adopt freely. Currently, we are working to port Embedded Xinu to the Sipeed Nezhas with the Allwinner D1 SOC. In Spring 2023, we will be running the Operating Systems course using RISC-V boards. Students will be building a RISC-V operating system throughout the semester. We hope to have a stable ARM/RISC-V release by the end of summer 2023.