One of our most recent projects deals with porting µnOS to the PowerPC architecture. We have already announced that there will be a port, but not released any specifics, yet. Here they come:

µnOS already runs on the x86 and XScale platforms. The first is a CISC, the second one a RISC platform. So, at first look, it seems only a minor step from XScale to PPC as PPC is also RISC. But apart from the load-store-architecture, which is typical for RISC processors, and its influence on the instruction sets and some other similarities between the XScale and PPC instruction sets, the two architectures do not have much in common from an OS programmers view.

Thus, the first step was to port the Sphere microkernel, which powers µnOS, in a well manageable environment, i.e. a PowerPC software emulator. Since this step has been accomplished in May 2005, we have been looking around for a 'real' PowerPC hardware platform to continue the µnOS port on. The major problem is that there is not a kind of standard platform, not even a kind of frequently used PowerPC environment.

But at least there are some hardware companies who try to establish a kind of standard PowerPC platform. One of them is Genesi who offer Pegasos, a mainboard fully compatible to the PC 'standard', from legacy peripheral devices to PCI, AGP, UltraATA-100, FireWire, USB etc. but powered by a 1GHz PowerPC progessor (G4) (more information about Pegasos).

Therefor, we are happy to announce that we have started a joint venture with Genesi where we use the Pegasos, i.e. an Open Desktop Workstation (ODW) form Genesi to port µnOS to a certain PowerPC platform. The joint venture will widen the variety of operating systems availble to the Pegasos platform by the very modern and stable operating system µnOS.