Interview with Jay Michaelson of Wasabi Systems 116
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."
Wasabi Systems? (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Wasabi Systems? (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Wasabi Systems? (Score:2, Funny)
Apologies... (Score:1, Funny)
Wasssaaaaaaabiiiiii!
Okay, I'm done
Also on-topic... (Score:3, Funny)
funny (Score:5, Interesting)
Jay Michaelson:
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...
Re:funny (Score:2)
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)
Re:funny (Score:1)
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.
Re:Well? (Score:4, Insightful)
Most Linux user make fun of GIANT, but in reality it's not much of an issue, as the system shouldn't spend time in the kernel (as it does in Linux) but actually run userland stuff, so, GIANT isn't that much of an issue on 8 or less CPU's.
Re:Well? (Score:2)
Re:Well? (Score:3, Interesting)
Does NetBSD support multiple processors?
Yes, for several years now. Initially it relied on one big kernel lock, just like pre 2.4 Linux did, but it's moving to finer grained locking. The great thing is NetBSD's dedication to portability, and it runs on MP i386, SPARC, Alpha, and Vax(!) systems that I'm aware of.
For the lowdown, see: http://mail-index.netbsd.org/tech-smp/
Chris
Re:Well? (Score:3, Informative)
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
Re:Well? (Score:2)
Wasabi Systems (Score:5, Informative)
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.
Someone likes sushi... (Score:2, Funny)
Re:Wasabi Systems (Score:2, Funny)
Uni Kohada2010F
Tako
Ika
Konishiwa!!
Re:Wasabi Systems (Score:1, Offtopic)
It was a joke, OK?
Glad to see the moderators are in their usual good form...
But a GOOD joke. (Score:2)
Who knows, geeks who name their company after horseradish may just be so obsessed that they name all their API's and products after sushi ingredients.
Re:But a GOOD joke. (Score:1)
Interview is (-1 Flaim bait) (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
Re:Interview is (-1 Flaim bait) (Score:2, Funny)
Re:Interview is (-1 Flaim bait) (Score:2, Insightful)
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)
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
Re:Article text, for karma whoring purposes (Score:1, Funny)
Re:Developer lashes out: What Killed FreeBSD (Score:1)
Scalability (Score:5, Interesting)
Rus
Re:Scalability (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Scalability (Score:2)
rus
Re:Scalability (Score:3, Informative)
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
Re:Scalability (Score:2)
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?
Re:Scalability (Score:2)
Chris
Re:Scalability (Score:1)
Re:Scalability (Score:2)
Re:Scalability (Score:2, Informative)
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)
Re:Scalability (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Scalability (Score:1)
SMP = symmetric multi-processing = fungible processors
Re:Scalability (Score:2)
Re:Scalability (Score:1)
The best about thing about Wasabi... (Score:4, Funny)
Who needs a fat penguin or a yellow fish? This is the best mascot ever
Why I like NetBSD (Score:1, Insightful)
2) Powerfull
3) Unix
Its "j00 1337"
Groan... (Score:2)
4) ?
5) Profit!
One long advert. (Score:1)
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)
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...)
Re:One long advert. (Score:1)
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
Re:One long advert. (Score:3, Informative)
Well, being as Jay's responsible for writing at least some of Wasabi's press releases, that makes sense. :^>
/. 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
As for the
Freebsd 4.8 is out (Score:1, Offtopic)
I am sorry and go fuck yourself (Score:2)
Re:It's a Crazy World! (Score:1)
that quote should be relegated to those oh so hilarious chain emails