MiniOS
A team research prototype of a neuromorphic, in-car style operating system. I led the team and wrote its host-side deterministic safety harness.
- C
- x86 assembly
- QEMU
- Make
- Python
key results
- 168checks (152 C, 16 Python) across 7 suites behind make compliance-test, all passing
- 4 lanesof messages, drained strictly critical-first
- 256bus events kept in the trace ring buffer
- 189files integrated across the team's work
how it works
my part
I led a team of four students: dividing the work, the architecture, integrating 189 files,
and the presentations. My teammates wrote the bootloader, the kernel and the spiking neural
network code. My part is the host-side deterministic safety harness (src/shared) and its
tests. The harness runs on the host, not inside the bootable kernel.
the harness
Eight modules. Messages go into four priority lanes, LOW, NORMAL, ALERT and CRITICAL, each a 64-entry ring buffer. Draining is strictly critical-first, and FIFO within a lane. When a lower lane is full, a new message overwrites its oldest entry; a full CRITICAL lane rejects the new message instead of overwriting one. The last 256 bus events are kept in a trace ring buffer.
A watchdog tracks up to 16 actors. When an actor goes twice its heartbeat interval without a heartbeat, it raises an alert that stays latched until the next heartbeat. Alerts fan out to log, UI and shutdown handlers.
tests
168 checks, 152 in C and 16 in Python, across 7 suites behind make compliance-test, built
with -Wall -Wextra -Werror. Time comes from an injected clock, so every run is
deterministic. All pass.
what i'd do next
- Compile the harness to WebAssembly for an in-browser simulator of the lanes, the trace and the watchdog, once the team agrees to publish the code.
- Run the compliance suite in CI.