==============================================
 Genode Labs Newsletter - October/November 2008
 ==============================================

 Content

 1. Live CD presenting the Genode OS architecture
 2. Release of the Genode OS Framework version 8.11
 3. Extended platform support for Genode FPGA Graphics


 1. Live CD presenting the Genode OS architecture
 ------------------------------------------------

 Since we launched the Genode project in August, we got requests
 from several people with an interest in exploring the Genode
 architecture but were hesitant to compile Genode from source
 code. To lower the bar for getting practical experience with
 Genode, we have created a live CD that can be started directly
 on standard PC hardware, the Qemu emulator, and VirtualBox. The
 live CD contains an interactive demonstration scenario, letting
 the user start and kill sub systems, assign memory quotas, and
 enforce dynamic policies. You can find the download of the CD's
 ISO image and usage information here:

   http://genode.org/download/live-cds


 2. Genode OS Framework release 8.11
 -----------------------------------

 With the release 8.11, the Genode project reached an important
 milestone towards the realization of real-world applications.

 The current version addresses two crucial preconditions for the
 practical use of the framework, the availability of device drivers,
 and a way to enable existing C code bases to be ported to Genode.
 Our new device-driver API called DDE kit allows for the reuse of
 existing C-written device drivers at low engineering costs. For
 facilitating the porting of the wealth of existing open-source
 libraries to Genode, we have complemented the base framework with
 a C runtime ported from FreeBSD.  Among the numerous changes and
 additions are a new API for asynchronous notifications, consistent
 typification of capabilities, and a new experimental feature
 called managed dataspaces.

 The complete compilation of improvements and new features are
 detailed in the release notes for Genode 8.11:

   http://genode.org/documentation/release-notes/8.11

 For downloading the latest release as source-code snapshot or
 directly from our public subversion repository, please visit
 the download section the project's website:

   http://genode.org/download


 3. Extended platform support for Genode FPGA Graphics
 -----------------------------------------------------

 The original version of the Genode FPGA Graphics (FX) project
 relied on the Xilinx Spartan 3A Starter Kit as reference platform.
 Since then, we have continuously enhanced the number of supported
 platforms. Thanks to our ongoing work and the community support,
 our project received, we can now report that Genode FX runs on
 the whole range of current Xilinx FPGAs. The official distribution
 comes with ready-to-use EDK projects for the following platforms:

  - Virtex-4-based Xilinx ML405 evaluation platform using VGA *new*
  - Virtex-5-based Xilinx ML507 evaluation platform using DVI
  - Spartan 3A and 3AN Starter-Kit boards using 12bit VGA
  - Spartan 3E Starter-Kit board using 3bit VGA *new*

 To further ease the adoption of Genode FX for custom FPGA plat-
 forms, we have thoroughly documented the process of porting both
 the hardware and software of Genode FX to a new platform, taking
 the ML405 as an example:

   http://sourceforge.net/docman/display_doc.php?docid=132123&group_id=237260

 The current version 8.10 of Genode FX is freely available for
 download via the project website:

   http://genode-labs.com/products/fpga-graphics


 About the newsletter
 --------------------

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 Best regards
 -- 
 Norman Feske
 Genode Labs

 http://www.genode-labs.com ยท http://genode.org

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