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BSD Operating Systems

Interview with Jay Michaelson of Wasabi Systems 116

Posted by CowboyNeal from the getting-to-know dept.
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."
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Interview with Jay Michaelson of Wasabi Systems More

Interview with Jay Michaelson of Wasabi Systems

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  • Wasabi Systems? (Score:3, Funny)

    by TheSHAD0W ( 258774 ) on Friday April 04, 2003 @01:48AM (#5658886) Homepage
    Was this company formed before or after the Budweiser "True" commercials?
  • ...but Someone's gotta say it.

    Wasssaaaaaaabiiiiii!

    Okay, I'm done :-)
    • The best way I've found to make a Japanese waiter crack up is to loudly ask for a mawashi to go with your sashimi. It's a sumo wrestler's jock-strap. Not quite the same thing as wasabi, but it might make your eyes water all the same :-)

  • funny (Score:5, Interesting)

    by lingqi ( 577227 ) on Friday April 04, 2003 @01:54AM (#5658910) Journal
    7. What new CPUs are you working on adding NetBSD support?
    Jay Michaelson: ... We also ported NetBSD to the Xilinx Virtex-II Pro, and the SuperH SH-5 last fall ...

    Virtex-II pro is an FPGA so you can't really "port to it" - though the catch is that they comes with IBM's powerPC cores embedded. Why would he mention that he ported to Virtex-II pro instead of just PowerPC architecture?

    and btw, it's kind of silly to name your company after horse-radish, especially done AFTER the budwiser commercials came out (the company was founded in 2000). Well, at least it's not named after certain rich person's (lack of) manhood, so I stay thankful for that...

    • Virtex-II pro is an FPGA so you can't really "port to it" - though the catch is that they comes with IBM's powerPC cores embedded. Why would he mention that he ported to Virtex-II pro instead of just PowerPC architecture?

      Even stranger he mentioned there were going to be some anouncements later this QUARTER!!! Since he also said only linux ports need three months instead of three weeks they must be ditching netBSD and switching to linux :)

      Jeroen

    • Re:funny (Score:3, Informative)

      by gr ( 4059 )
      Why would he mention that he ported to Virtex-II pro instead of just PowerPC architecture?
      Presumably because significant effort was necessary over and above the existing NetBSD/powerpc port to get the OS to actually run on that hardware with full features. Kind of like how there's a separate NetBSD/macppc port.
    • Actually, the corporate name is aeons old. Even still, the current incarnation of Wasabi happens to predate the Wasabi - True commercials from Budweiser, if only by a few months.

      On a slightly more substantial issue, no you can't just stick some random PowerPC code onto an FPGA and expect anything to happen. Of course, I'm sure you know exactly what you're talking about and, in fact, enjoy a lucrative living as an embedded engineer, so you don't need me to tell you that.

  • Wasabi Systems (Score:5, Informative)

    by BJH ( 11355 ) on Friday April 04, 2003 @01:56AM (#5658917)

    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.

  • Interview is (-1 Flaim bait) (Score:5, Interesting)

    by satanami69 ( 209636 ) on Friday April 04, 2003 @01:56AM (#5658921) Homepage
    Uh oh. Jay Michaelson goes on to quote the GPL "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." I can hear zealots complaining that software needs to be free, etc.

    Honestly though, the BSD license does offer a great reward to users. Companies can offer back to the community and are given a choice. GPL take s the choice away from vendors. Although who knows what gets put into the code unless it's released to all.

    • A great example of this is Apple, who have taken a load of BSD code, modified it, and released a big chunk back to the community.

    • Ive always viewed this as:

      GPL: takes measures to protect anything that could be.

      BSD License: takes measures to protect what is currently available.

      The BSD License understands that the code that is released will never be lost if someone decides to close source it, and it is up to the company/whoever to decide if they want to make that purely voluntary contribution back to the community. THe GPL goes further and tries to protect code that doesnt exist yet, but doesnt give you the choice, as you said.

  • Article text, for karma whoring purposes (Score:1, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward
    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. Today, we talk to the Vice President of Wasabi Systems, Jay Michaelson.

    1. NetBSD is the OS of choice at Wasabi Systems. How is the embedded version of NetBSD stacks up in performance when compared to VXWo

  • Scalability (Score:5, Interesting)

    by rf0 ( 159958 ) <rghf@fsck.me.uk> on Friday April 04, 2003 @02:11AM (#5658984) Homepage
    In the interview they said that NetBSD can scale but does anyone have a comparision between says the locks in the linux kernel and the NetBSD kernel? I'm just intrested in how high they can both scale. I know that Linux is now running upto 64 CPU's in the shape of the SGI Altix but I have no idea how far NetBSD goes

    Rus

    • Re:Scalability (Score:4, Informative)

      by Anonymous Coward on Friday April 04, 2003 @02:59AM (#5659121)
      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).
      • Ah thanks for the clarification. I'm just so use to hearing. Look platform X runs on Y CPU's I never thought about it going down the other way though re-reading the article it is obvious what he is talking about

        rus

      • Re:Scalability (Score:3, Informative)

        by LizardKing ( 5245 )

        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

        • I have it running on a dual processor SparcStation 20 which recent versions of the Linux kernel wont even compile on, let alone boot.

          I think you need to qualify what you mean by "recent versions". Are we talking 2.5.66 here, or have you shown a releasedkernel not to compile or boot?
          • Linux SPARC support has been borked for most of the 2.4 series, as well as 2.5. This is mainly due to key SPARC gurus like David Miller concentrating exclusively on SPARC64 support. Last I heard (several months ago), SPARC32 was without a maintainer. The Aurora Linux guys are trying to keep the 2.4 kernel working on 32bit SPARC's, but the 1.0 release of their distribution was extremely flaky during installation and then failed to boot on a SparcStation 5.

            Chris
      • x86 netbsd SMP code was recently put into -current, and fairly immature yet. A fairer comparison would be using PPC or sparc which iirc have had SMP on netbsd for some time now.
    • He talks a lot about embedded, but doesn't say a lot a bout specific examples. Where exactly is NetBSD used?

      • Re:Scalability (Score:2, Informative)

        by Anonymous Coward
        Routers, printers

        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 change

    • Re:Scalability (Score:3, Interesting)

      by Arandir ( 19206 )
      How many embedded systems do you know that require symmetrical multiprocessing? Seriously now. I'm certain there's a few, but if there are any that require 64 CPU's I would be extremely surprised. I would be mildly surprised if there were more than a dozen that needed 8.

      • Re:Scalability (Score:3, Insightful)

        by cyb97 ( 520582 )
        There are several embedded systems that use SMP, namely a lot of mobilephones do so... One for software and one for GSM-handling, that's the kludge phonemakers used to get around the timing problems with GSM. Dual CPU-phones don't put as high demands upon RealTime handling and stability on the softwareside of things as the GSM-CPU would still be available to handle GSM-requests...
        • There are several embedded systems that use SMP, namely a lot of mobilephones do so... One for software and one for GSM-handling


          SMP = symmetric multi-processing = fungible processors

      • the apple ipod (actually designed by a small company called portalplayer [portalplayer.com]) uses two arm7 cpu's. however, it's not exactly what you'd call smp. it runs an rtos on each of the cpu's.

  • The best about thing about Wasabi... (Score:4, Funny)

    by leoboiko ( 462141 ) <leoboiko@gmail . c om> on Friday April 04, 2003 @02:23AM (#5659019) Homepage
    Don't forget the samurai daemon [wasabisystems.com]!

    Who needs a fat penguin or a yellow fish? This is the best mascot ever :)

  • Why I like NetBSD (Score:1, Insightful)

    by ExEleven ( 601282 )
    1) Small
    2) Powerfull
    3) Unix

    Its "j00 1337"
  • After reading it, I get the feeling this wasn't really so much an interview, more a commercial plug masquerading as an interview. We found out very little except that NetBSD can apparently be ported very easily, and Wasabi apparently has a variety of clients and products.

    Maybe for the next interview they'll pick someone who can talk about some actual details. Might be more interesting.

    • Re:One long advert. (Score:3, Informative)

      by gr ( 4059 )
      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...)
      • Ah; didn't realise he was in that position. In that case, the interview seems a bit more reasonable. :-)

        Didn't really have any questions in specific, I just expected somewhat more than there was there - like I said, reading it I got the feeling you do when somewhere just republishes a press release.

        As for the Slashdot interview, that's a good idea; submit it to ... er, whoever queues them up...

        • Re:One long advert. (Score:3, Informative)

          by gr ( 4059 )

          reading it I got the feeling you do when somewhere just republishes a press release.

          Well, being as Jay's responsible for writing at least some of Wasabi's press releases, that makes sense. :^>

          As for the /. interview... it'd be sort of be mindless evangelism on my part. I use NetBSD on all of my own computers [eclipsed.net], interned with Wasabi for a summer during college [swarthmore.edu], know those people I mentioned (some even personally), and take active part [google.com] in the NetBSD mailing lists. I certainly don't have questions tha

  • and on a offtopic note. FreeBSD 4.8 is out RELEASE document [freebsd.org]. Go get it.

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