Quest
    A lightweight, predictable and dependable kernel for multicore processors




HOWTO Guides and General Documents

  • HOWTO setup Docker and the Quest toolchain to build the kernel.
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  • This document also explains how to setup Quest on the Minnowboard Max. Also included is information on setting up and using the Docker toolchain to build Quest(-V), similar to that described above.
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  • Installing and getting started with Quest on the Intel Galileo board.
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  • Installing and getting started with Quest on the Intel Edison board.
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Technical Papers and Presentations

  • Soham Sinha, Ahmad Golchin, Craig Einstein and Richard West, "A Paravirtualized Android for Next Generation Interactive Automotive Systems", in Proceedings of the 21st International Workshop on Mobile Computing Systems and Applications (HotMobile 2020), Austin, Texas, USA, March 3-4, 2020, DOI 10.1145/3376897.3377861
[pdf]
  • Ahmad Golchin, Zhuoqun Cheng and Richard West, "Tuned Pipes: End-to-end Throughput and Delay Guarantees for USB Devices", in Proceedings of the 39th IEEE Real-Time Systems Symposium (RTSS), Nashville, Tennessee, USA, December 11-14, 2018
[pdf]
  • Zhuoqun Cheng, Richard West and Craig Einstein, "End-to-end Analysis and Design of a Drone Flight Controller", in IEEE Transactions on Computer-Aided Design of Integrated Circuits and Systems, Volume 37 Issue 11, pp. 1-12, November 2018, DOI: 10.1109/TCAD.2018.2857399 (also in Proceedings of the ACM SIGBED International Conference on Embedded Software (EMSOFT), Torino, Italy, September 30-October 5, 2018)
[pdf]
  • Zhuoqun Cheng, Richard West and Ying Ye, "Building Real-Time Embedded Applications on QduinoMC: A Web-connected 3D Printer Case Study", in Proceedings of the 23rd IEEE Real-Time and Embedded Technology and Applications Symposium (RTAS), Pittsburgh, PA, USA, April 18-21, 2017 (Outstanding Paper, Best Student Paper Award)
[pdf]
  • Ying Ye, Richard West, Jingyi Zhang and Zhuoqun Cheng, "MARACAS: A Real-Time Multicore VCPU Scheduling Framework", in Proceedings of the 37th IEEE Real-Time Systems Symposium (RTSS), Porto, Portugal, November 29-December 2, 2016
[pdf]
  • Richard West, Ye Li, Eric Missimer and Matthew Danish, "A Virtualized Separation Kernel for Mixed Criticality Systems", in ACM Transactions on Computer Systems, Volume 34, Issue 3, Article 8, June 2016 (DOI: 10.1145/2935748)
[pdf]
  • Richard West, Eric Missimer, Katherine Missimer, "Mixed-Criticality Scheduling with I/O", in Proceedings of the 28th Euromicro Conference on Real-Time Systems (ECRTS), Toulouse, France, July 5-8, 2016
[pdf]
  • Zhuoqun Cheng, Ye Li and Richard West, "Qduino: A Multithreaded Arduino System for Embedded Computing", in Proceedings of the 36th IEEE Real-Time Systems Symposium (RTSS), San Antonio, Texas, December 1-4, 2015
[pdf]
  • Ye Li, Richard West, Zhuoqun Cheng and Eric Missimer, "Predictable Communication and Migration in the Quest-V Separation Kernel", in Proceedings of the 35th IEEE Real-Time Systems Symposium (RTSS), Rome, Italy, December 2-5 2014
[pdf]
  • Ye Li, Richard West and Eric Missimer, "A Virtualized Separation Kernel for Mixed Criticality Systems", in Proceedings of the 10th ACM SIGPLAN/SIGOPS International Conference on Virtual Execution Environments (VEE), Salt Lake City, Utah, March 1-2 2014
[pdf]
  • Ye Li, Richard West, Eric Missimer, "The Quest-V Separation Kernel for Mixed Criticality Systems", in Proceedings of the 1st International Workshop on Mixed Criticality Systems (WMC) at the 34th IEEE Real-Time Systems Symposium (RTSS 2013), Vancouver, Canada, December 2013
[pdf]
  • Richard West, Ye Li, Eric Missimer, "Quest-V: A Virtualized Multikernel for Safety-Critical Real-Time Systems", Technical Report: arXiv:1310.6349, arXiv.org (This is essentially an updated version of Technical Report: arXiv:1112.5136)
[pdf]
  • Eric Missimer, Ye Li and Richard West, "Real-Time USB Communication in the Quest Operating System", in Proceedings of the 19th IEEE Real-Time and Embedded Technology and Applications Symposium (RTAS), Philadelphia, USA, April 9-11, 2013
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  • Ye Li, Eric Missimer and Richard West, "Predictable Migration and Communication in the Quest-V        
      Multikernel", Technical Report:arXiv:1310.6301, arXiv.org
[pdf]
  • Richard West, Ye Li and Eric Missimer, "Time Management in the Quest-V RTOS", in the 8th Annual Workshop on Operating Systems Platforms for Embedded Real-Time Applications (OSPERT), Pisa, Italy, July 10, 2012
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  • Ye Li, Matthew Danish and Richard West, "Quest-V: A Virtualized Multikernel for High-Confidence Systems", Technical Report: arXiv:1112.5136, arXiv.org
[pdf]
  • Ye Li, Eric Missimer, Richard West, Matthew Danish and Ying Ye, "Quest-V: A Virtualized Multikernel for High-Confidence Systems", Poster for the BU Science Day, Spring 2012
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  • Matthew Danish, Ye Li and Richard West, "Virtual-CPU Scheduling in the Quest Operating System", in Proceedings of the 17th IEEE Real-Time and Embedded Technology and Applications Symposium (RTAS), Chicago, IL, USA, April 11-14, 2011
[pdf]
  • Slides presented at Charles River Analytics (CRA), Cambridge, MA on Quest VCPU Scheduling
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  • Slides for the talk at the 17th IEEE Real-Time and Embedded Technology and Applications Symposium, Chicago, USA, April 13, 2011
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  • Poster presented at the BU Science Day, Spring 2011 on Quest’s VCPU Scheduling Infrastructure
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  • Poster describing the background to the hardware performance monitoring subsystem in Quest, based on collaborations with VMware
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  • Richard West, Puneet Zaroo, Carl A. Waldspurger and Xiao Zhang, "Online Cache Modeling for Commodity Multicore Processors", Operating Systems Review, Volume 44, Number 4, Special VMware Track, December 2010

    • Paper with colleagues at VMware on the design of a hardware performance monitoring technique for predicting cache occupancy -- we use this technique in Quest as part of our strategy for multicore resource management
[pdf]
  • Early design overview (for the original uniprocessor version of Quest)
[pdf]

Current Team

Past Members