LiteOS is the world’s most lightweight IoT OS. It is small in size at 10KB and supports zero configuration, auto-discovery, and auto-networking. It can be widely applied to different areas including smart homes, wearable, connected vehicles and other industries. The LiteOS helps to simplify the development of smart hardware to enhance IoT connectivity. In addition, Huawei announced that LiteOS will be opened to all developers, which enables them to quickly develop their own IoT products.
Meanwhile, Google is rumoured to be unveiling an IoT OS as well during IO.
Is there any connection between the system announced by Huawei and http://www.liteos.net ?
No, they base it on http://www.contiki-os.org
Where did that info come from? Have a link?
Don’t know the answer… But LiteOS (the open source one) has a GPL 3 license, and Huawei has no qualms about using GPL software in their stuff (they do it all the time). I would expect based on what I have seen that their LiteOS (which they have already stated is open source) and the one you linked to are one in the same.
Once they distribute it the answer will be clear. It’s kind of sad though that the guys that wrote LiteOS (the GPL one) don’t even know the answer to your question – they seem to be asking the same question on their home page…
Realities of open source software licenses: sometimes you just get left out of the loop. Assuming Huawei is using it they don’t really have to tell the developers anything. All they are on the hook for is making their modifications available, and they only have to do that after they distribute a binary to a 3rd party. Until they distribute they can essentially stay in stealth mode if they want to.
After reading some more… Multiple articles state Heawei’s LiteOS is “Linux based” and 10KB in size. Call me confused…
1. Neither the GPL’d version of LiteOS or Contiki are Linux based.
2. How the hell do you make anything “Linux based” end up being a 10KB binary??? That is a couple orders of magnitude smaller than is remotely possible for an actual working Linux kernel.
LiteOS is “UNIX like”… Maybe that is what they mean? Regardless, I’m inclined to think that it is based on the GPL’d LiteOS, either that or they made a really bad choice in naming it. You would think, even with the language barrier, they would pick a different name for a new iOT OS rather than giving it the same name as one that has been around for so long and is well known (on top of the fact that there are really only maybe 4 or 5 in existence of any note).
It’s all clear as mud.
Yeah, my first thought was: what about early versions of linux surely they were much smaller.
http://ftp.kernel.org/pub/linux/kernel/Historic/old-versions/
0.11 was ~ 93KB
So, I don’t think that’s possibly linux based, unless they managed to shrink it even further somehow.
That link is to source tarballs, so that is measuring the size of the source tree. But even still, the actual kernel binary of 0.11 was way bigger than 10Kb. More importantly though it barely did anything and no one in their right mind would base anything on that now (it was mostly a toy at that point, and absolutely x86 only).
The smallest useful build I have seen was a 2.6 kernel for a Cortex-Mx where great heroics were used to get the kernel image (Stripped to the hilt, Thumb mode, compressed data, XIP, bss segment removed and RAM inited to zeroes) down to just shy of 1MB… That was just the kernel, no drivers, no userspace.
10kb just ain’t doable. Maybe they used some code from Linux, but it can’t actually be Linux anymore…
I’m sure we can expect them to release the source code any time now…
I really don’t understand why socialist China has such a poor grip on the ideas behind floss code licenses.
Because they haven’t been socialist for a while now in anything but name?
I’m speaking of politics. Economically they’re Deng Zhou pengs hybrid system.
The way I see it, many Americans also have a poor grip on the ideas behind certain floss code licenses.
… I want to see security. The pessimist in me says I won’t be seeing that any time soon, though.
WereCatf,
Actually, being so small is beneficial for security too. At this size, it would be feasible for most developers to audit the code themselves.
Behemoth kernels have a lot more places to hide bugs, even with hundreds/thousands of developers working on it.
I am sure there is some kind of qualifier (must not be embedded?) for “smallest” OS in this story. I thought I have seen smaller, having done research years ago on sensor networks and small OSs.
For example, micro-velOSity is 1.6KB. The now defunct femtoOS (although still available) was around 2KB. I think full blown QNX is 12KB, and although that is greater than 10KB, it is totally mature.
Hi,
Erm. For embedded systems things get all blurred.
As a general rule of thumb:
a) if you can remove all applications and still “operate the system” (e.g. use it to install new applications) then it’s an OS.
b) if it contains a scheduler but isn’t an OS; then it’s a kernel
c) if it’s neither OS nor kernel; then it’s just a shared piece of code that other embedded software can use (sort of like a shared library)
At 1.6KB, I’d assume micro-velOSity is the latter (neither OS nor kernel).
As far as I can tell; femtoOS is a kernel and not an OS.
QNX is an OS which includes a micro-kernel and many other pieces (drivers, etc). That micro-kernel might be 12 KiB, but QNX (the OS, including drivers, etc) is not 12 KiB.
LiteOS (in the article) is probably a kernel and not an OS.
– Brendan
I guess that ZX80’s 4KB of ROM could count as an OS?
I believe (not reading chinese) that Huaweis’ stuff is here:
http://www.oiotc.cc/index.php
https://github.com/OIOTC/Liteos
But yeah, saying “it’s 10KB, woot!” alone doesn’t mean much…
There are pretty functional OSes around lite RiotOS on the 6KB par.
Yes thats the one, but the github ist empty
Google translator on the wiki page tells:
Liteos V1.0.0 version, Huawei IOT LiteOS system released the first version of the open source software, including the components are: Liteos Kernel, WPA2.2, uIP.
1. Liteos Kernel is a lightweight Huawei’s self-built real-time operating system with high real-time, high stability, and has been commercially available for many years, B010 version supports Cortex-M3 core.
2. WPA2.2: Wifi secure access protocol is based on BSD License of open source software, WPA2.2 main function is to ensure the safety of Wifi connections, the current version uses its pre-shared key authentication mode.
3. uIP: uIP protocol stack from the Contiki OS transplanted, cut off the TCP / IP in a number of non-essential functions, to achieve the RFC-compliant IPv4, TCP and UDP protocols, is a lightweight TCP / IP protocol stack In addition, we use the CMSIS interface adds basic support for multi-threaded, and provides BSD-Socket programming interface, easier to develop and debug.
Architecture overview:
http://wiki.oiotc.cc/index.php?title=%E5%86%85%E6~*…
Well based on that (thanks!), pretty confident we can say it is not related to the GPL’d LiteOS and is also not based on Linux. Not based on Contiki either, but they did use its IP stack so I guess that is where that part came from.
So they just happened to use the same name as a GPL’d iOT OS. Mystery solved.
IP stack, scheduler, driver api, vfs, efi prober – all from Contiki. Of course it’s based on Contiki – they just don’t say how much in that link.
After reading their translated wiki I don’t agree. Could be wrong of course, but their documentation makes this look somewhat trivial compared to Contiki (which is not surprising considering the 10kb storage requirement – a minimal Contiki is 3x bigger).
They also indicate in a few places the code has commercial origins and has been used for quite a number of years (minus the network stuff).
Well see I guess.
Thanks for the link.
Here is a picture of the architecture
http://wiki.oiotc.cc/index.php?title=%E5%86%85%E6~*…
https://translate.google.com.sg/translate?sl=zh-CN&tl=en&js=y&prev=_…