Trustworthy Systems

Fast, secure, adaptable: LionsOS design, implementation and performance

Authors

Gernot Heiser, Ivan Velickovic, Peter Chubb, Alwin Joshy, Anuraag Ganesh, Bill Nguyen, Cheng Li, Courtney Darville, Guangtao Zhu, James Archer, Jingyao Zhou, Krishnan Winter, Lucy Parker, Szymon Duchniewicz and Tianyi Bai

    School of Computer Science and Engineering
    UNSW,
    Sydney 2052, Australia

Abstract

We present LionsOS, an operating system for security-and safety-critical embedded systems. LionsOS is based on the formally verified seL4 microkernel and designed with verification in mind. It uses a static architecture and features a highly modular design driven by strict separation of concerns and a focus on simplicity. We demonstrate that LionsOS outperforms Linux.

BibTeX Entry

  @article{Heiser_VCJGNLDZAZWPDB_25,
    archiveprefix    = {arXiv},
    author           = {Gernot Heiser and Ivan Velickovic and Peter Chubb and Alwin Joshy and Anuraag Ganesh and Bill Nguyen
                        and Cheng Li and Courtney Darville and Guangtao Zhu and James Archer and Jingyao Zhou and Krishnan
                        Winter and Lucy Parker and Szymon Duchniewicz and Tianyi Bai},
    eprint           = {2501.06234},
    journal          = {arXiv preprint},
    month            = jan,
    numpages         = {14},
    paperurl         = {https://trustworthy.systems/publications/papers/Heiser_VCJGNLDZAZWPDB_25.pdf},
    primaryclass     = {cs.OS},
    title            = {Fast, Secure, Adaptable: {LionsOS} Design, Implementation and Performance},
    url              = {https://arxiv.org/abs/2501.06234},
    year             = {2025}
  }

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