GSOC 2013 project " Kernel Size Reduction for Embedded System "

[Daniel Braniss]

> > happy that FreeBSD is among the selected organization.
> >
> > I am a third year student interested to work in the field of embedded
> > system. I applied last year and the title of my project was " Kernel Size
> why only in embedded system. smaller programs are always good :)
> 
> And yes FreeBSD kernel is huge. doesn't really matter with 1GB or more 
> RAM but yes - it is huge even relative to linux.
> 
hum,
Copyright (c) 1992-2012 The FreeBSD Project.
Copyright (c) 1979, 1980, 1983, 1986, 1988, 1989, 1991, 1992, 1993, 1994
        The Regents of the University of California. All rights reserved.
FreeBSD is a registered trademark of The FreeBSD Foundation.
FreeBSD 9.1-PRERELEASE #2: Wed Dec 12 13:15:53 IST 2012
    danny at rnd:/home/obj/rnd/alix/i386.i386/r+d/stable/9/sys/ALIX i386
CPU: Geode(TM) Integrated Processor by AMD PCS (498.06-MHz 586-class CPU)
  Origin = "AuthenticAMD"  Id = 0x5a2  Family = 0x5  Model = 0xa  Stepping = 2
  Features=0x88a93d<FPU,DE,PSE,TSC,MSR,CX8,SEP,PGE,CMOV,CLFLUSH,MMX>
  AMD Features=0xc0400000<MMX+,3DNow!+,3DNow!>
real memory  = 268435456 (256 MB)
avail memory = 253120512 (241 MB)
pnpbios: Bad PnP BIOS data checksum
K6-family MTRR support enabled (2 registers)
cryptosoft0: <software crypto> on motherboard
pcib0 pcibus 0 on motherboard
pci0: <PCI bus> on pcib0
Geode LX: PC Engines ALIX.3 v0.99h tinyBIOS V1.4a (C)1997-2007

and top:
last pid: 31829;  load averages:  0.00,  0.00,  0.00   up 60+17:07:18  09:52:20
24 processes:  1 running, 23 sleeping
CPU:  0.0% user,  0.0% nice,  0.4% system,  0.0% interrupt, 99.6% idle
Mem: 17M Active, 56M Inact, 33M Wired, 34M Buf, 136M Free
Swap: 512M Total, 512M Free

  PID USERNAME  THR PRI NICE   SIZE    RES STATE    TIME   WCPU COMMAND
31829 danny       1  21    0  9784K  2004K RUN      0:00  1.86% top
 4288 danny       1  21    0 13160K  5128K select   0:01  1.37% xterm
21604 root        1  20    0 21940K 12796K select  16:51  0.00% python
  687 root        1  20    0 11160K  2660K select   5:55  0.00% ntpd
 3967 danny       1  20    0 13024K  4364K select   1:55  0.00% elockd
  537 root        1  20    0  9592K  9612K select   1:54  0.00% amd-6.2a3
...

this host can run x11 apps!
so 'Huge' is a relative matter, my first PDP11/45 has 64K :-)

danny