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Writing an operating system kernel from scratch – RISC-V/OpenSBI/Zig

Posted on: September 13, 2025 | at 09:30 AM Follow @popovicu94 I recently implemented a minimal proof of concept time-sharing operating system kernel on RISC-V. In this post, I’ll share the details of how this prototype works. The target audience is anyone looking to understand low-level system software, drivers, system calls, etc., and I hope this will be especially useful to students of system software and computer architecture. This is a redo of an exercise I did for my undergraduate cours

Writing an operating system kernel from scratch

Posted on: September 13, 2025 | at 09:30 AM Follow @popovicu94 I recently implemented a minimal proof of concept time-sharing operating system kernel on RISC-V. In this post, I’ll share the details of how this prototype works. The target audience is anyone looking to understand low-level system software, drivers, system calls, etc., and I hope this will be especially useful to students of system software and computer architecture. This is a redo of an exercise I did for my undergraduate cours

Apple Snuck a Clue About Its Smart Home Plans Into the iPhone Air Reveal - and I Caught It

Apple's "awe dropping" Tuesday event has wrapped up, and we're all still taking in the new paper-thin iPhone Air line (not everyone's in awe of it) as well as the iPhone 17 Pro. But something caught my ear in the middle of the iPhone Air announcement. Along with other connectivity support, Apple made sure to add that the iPhone Air would support Thread. In a presentation where every second and word was intentional, it means a lot that the company included it. (Preorders for the iPhone 17 Air ope

A Split-Second Hint in the iPhone Air Launch Shows Apple's Ready for the Smart Home

Apple's "awe dropping" Tuesday event has wrapped up, and we're all still taking in the new paper-thin iPhone Air line (not everyone's in awe of it) as well as the iPhone 17 Pro. But something caught my ear in the middle of the iPhone Air announcement. Along with other connectivity support, Apple made sure to add that the iPhone Air would support Thread. In a presentation where every second and word was intentional, it means a lot that the company included it. "So, what's Thread?" is probably yo

Matmul on Blackwell: Part 2 – Using Hardware Features to Optimize Matmul

In the first blog post in this series we explained Nvidia's Blackwell GPU architecture and concluded with a 4 line kernel that was a bit worse than cuBLAS. In fact, the performance was a lot worse coming in at 0.3% of cuBLAS and leaving 1758 TFLops on the table. In this post we are going to continue our journey and improve our performance by more than 50x our initial kernel benchmark. Along the way we are going to explain more GPU programming concepts and leverage novel Blackwell features. Note

Meta is fixing threads on Threads

Meta is finally fixing how threads work on its social network Threads. Prior to this, there was no real way to know how long a thread was or even if a post was part of a longer discussion. The company has made "several changes that display threaded posts more clearly." These include a new "view more" label that indicates a post is part of a longer thread. This is an easy way to instantly know if someone's thoughts continue past an initial post. Meta There's also a new design element that auto

Fil's Unbelievable Garbage Collector

Fil's Unbelievable Garbage Collector Fil-C uses a parallel concurrent on-the-fly grey-stack Dijkstra accurate non-moving garbage collector called FUGC (Fil's Unbelievable Garbage Collector). You can find the source code for the collector itself in fugc.c, though be warned, that code cannot possibly work without lots of support logic in the rest of the runtime and in the compiler. Let's break down FUGC's features: Parallel: marking and sweeping happen in multiple threads, in parallel. The more

Threads is testing long-form posts with support for formatted text [U: Launched]

Update, Sep 4: The feature is now live. Find the new details below. While Threads already allows up to 500 characters per post (which is more than enough for casual users used to the microblogging format), it is now testing support for long-form posts through “text attachments”. Here’s how it works. Meta has confirmed the test, but has no ETA for the feature As spotted by app researcher Radu Oncescu (via TechCrunch), Threads is testing a new “text attachment” feature on iOS, which could repla

Threads posts now support 'text attachments' up to 10,000 characters

That was fast. A week after a new feature for sharing long-form text was spotted in the Threads app, Meta is making the experiment official. Threads users will now be able to append text snippets of up to 10,000 characters to their posts in a feature Meta says is meant to support journalists and creators on the platform. As Engadget detailed last week, the feature is fairly basic for now. Selecting "text attachment" from the post composer opens up a simple text editor that has some formatting o

You can now attach 10,000 character blogs to your Threads posts

is a senior reporter covering technology, gaming, and more. He joined The Verge in 2019 after nearly two years at Techmeme. Posts from this author will be added to your daily email digest and your homepage feed. Meta is adding a new feature to let you add a bunch of extra text to Threads posts — no screenshots of text blocks required. Starting today, Meta is rolling out a tool that lets you attach up to 10,000 characters of text to Threads posts, giving you a way to build upon the 500-characte

Threads challenges X by offering free support for up to 10K characters, plus prominent links

After recently being spotted testing a way to share longer text, Threads, Meta’s X competitor, is now officially rolling out the feature that allows users to attach up to 10,000 characters of text to their post. The addition has been designed with the needs of creators in mind, as it supports linking out to content outside of Threads, like newsletters, blogs, podcasts, and more. Before this update, Threads supported 500 characters — which is already far more than the 280 characters offered to X

C++: Strongly Happens Before?

Strongly Happens Before? It started innocently enough. I just wanted to brush up on C++ memory orderings. It’s been a while since I last stared into the abyss of std::atomic , so I figured, why not revisit some good ol’ std::memory_order mayhem? Then I saw it. Strongly happens before. Wait, what? When did we get a stronger version of happens before? Turns out, it has been there for quite some time (since C++20 in fact), and it’s actually solving a very real problem in the memory model. If yo

Leak suggests new Philips Hue lights will have direct Matter support

There’s already been a number of leaks of upcoming Philips Hue products that are expected to be announced next week ahead of IFA. But one thing that hasn’t been mentioned was support for Matter-over-Thread. While there’s no confirmation that support is coming, there’s compelling evidence to suggest it might be. First off, packaging for two unannounced bulbs appeared on Amazon, with a Matter logo prominently displayed on the box. While Hue devices have been capable of connecting via Matter using

Threads is testing long-form posts with support for formatted text

While Threads already allows up to 500 characters per post (which is more than enough for casual users used to the microblogging format), it is now testing support for long-form posts through “text attachments”. Here’s how it works. Meta has confirmed the test, but has no ETA for the feature As spotted by app researcher Radu Oncescu (via TechCrunch), Threads is testing a new “text attachment” feature on iOS, which could replace the common practice of stringing together multiple posts that blow

Meta is experimenting with long-form text on Threads

Meta seems to be working on ways for Threads users to share long-form writing within a single post. Several users have reported seeing a new "attach text" feature on the service, which allows them to embed large chunks of text within a single post. The feature, which hasn't been formally announced by Meta, is similar to the "articles" feature that's available on X to Premium+ subscribers. It enables Threads users to embed longer text excerpts within a single Threads post and offers some basic f

Threads tests a way to share long-form text on the platform

Threads is testing a new feature that makes it easy to share long-form text on the social network, Meta confirmed to TechCrunch on Thursday. The feature lets users attach a block of text to a post instead of creating a thread of several different posts when looking to share more in-depth thoughts and ideas. App researcher Radu Oncescu first spotted the new “text attachment” feature on iOS and shared a screenshot of it. According to the app’s description of the new feature, it’s designed to allo

Matter Is Finally Ready to Deliver the Smart Home It Promised

Last month's Ikea's announcement of more than 20 new Matter-over-Thread devices felt like a much-needed breakthrough moment for the high-profile smart home standard. If Ikea—a brand with a broad, not necessarily tech-savvy customer base—is all-in on Matter, have we finally arrived at the smart home utopia that was first promised back in late 2019? It was then, amid growing frustrations from users around smart home compatibility, that tech giants including Apple, Amazon, Google, and Samsung form

ArduinoOS (2017)

To get the uptime of the operating system use getElapsedMilliseconds or getElapsedTicks . Locks In order to keep your application thread safe you can use locks. With locks you can prevent an other thread to access a variable, function, ... in an unsafe state. Example for conflicting threads: void mainThread () { InitTask (thread2); while ( true ) { Serial. println ( " Thread1 " ); } } void thread2 () { while ( true ) { Serial. println ( " Thread2 " ); } } If you execute this code you will n

The Pixel 10 Pro has a smart home feature that might make it future-proof

TL;DR The Google Pixel 10 Pro includes a built-in Thread radio, a crucial piece of hardware for the future of the smart home. Thread is a low-power mesh network that offers a more reliable and faster connection for smart home devices compared to Wi-Fi. This inclusion future-proofs the phone, enabling it to directly control the growing number of Matter-compatible smart devices. Google’s commitment to seven years of software support for the new Pixel 10 series is bold, as the phone’s state-of-t

Without the futex, it's futile

Phil Eaton’s book club is starting The Art of Multiprocessor Programming, 2nd Edition , which is a very well regarded textbook, and pretty recently updated (2021). I’ve even heard of a couple of authors. I’ve done a lot of concurrent programming, and have always felt like I’ve still got plenty to learn, so I was excited for the topic. So far, what I’ve learned is that I would never recommend this book, despite any merits. Academia certainly struggles to find the right balance between teaching

Without the Futex, It's Futile

Phil Eaton’s book club is starting The Art of Multiprocessor Programming, 2nd Edition , which is a very well regarded textbook, and pretty recently updated (2021). I’ve even heard of a couple of authors. I’ve done a lot of concurrent programming, and have always felt like I’ve still got plenty to learn, so I was excited for the topic. So far, what I’ve learned is that I would never recommend this book, despite any merits. Academia certainly struggles to find the right balance between teaching

OpenBSD is so fast, I had to modify the program slightly to measure itself

Here’s a little benchmark complements of Jann Horn. It’s unexpectedly slow on Linux. OpenBSD is so fast, I had to modify the program slightly to measure itself, as the time utility is missing sufficient precision to even record nonzero. All it does is create one extra thread, then both existing threads create 256 sockets. What’s so hard about that? #include <pthread.h> #include <unistd.h> #include <err.h> #include <stdio.h> #include <sys/time.h> #include <sys/socket.h> static void open_socket

In-depth analysis on Valorant's Guarded Regions

This post is not meant to be an attack towards Riot Games’ Vanguard or Microsoft’s Windows, they have done an excellent job with their products and will continue to do so for the coming years, the content of this post is gathered solely by me, and I am not tied to any game hack publisher or entities. I have no intention of harming any company’s product, and everything here is constructed for educational purposes. In the cutthroat world of online gaming, there is no greater threat to the sanctit

Threads crosses 400M monthly active users as it gains on X

Following a recent series of welcome updates as Threads turned two, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced today that his X competitor crossed 400 million monthly active users (MAUs), a 50 million boost since April. Zuckerberg’s announcement today was short, but significant: The last time Meta detailed its monthly active user number was on April 30, during its Q1 2025 earnings call, up from 320 million in Q4 2024 in late January. If it keeps it stride, this means Meta could see north of 100M MAUs

Threads is up to 400 million monthly active users

Meta's X competitor, Threads, is continuing to add users at a brisk clip, with the social network now surpassing 400 million monthly active users. The news, reported by Fast Company , follows Threads reaching the 300 million mark in December 2024 and the 200 million mark in August 2024. FC also cited data from Similarweb that showed mobile performance for Threads drawing closer to the figures from X. In June, Threads posted 115.1 million daily active users on mobile and X had 132 million. Those

Threads now has more than 400 million monthly active users

Just two years since its launch as a competitor to Twitter (now X), Meta’s Threads has topped 400 million monthly active users (MAUs), Instagram head Adam Mosseri announced on Tuesday. “As of a few weeks ago we there are more than 400 million people active on Threads every month,” Mosseri wrote in a Threads post. “It’s been quite the ride over the last two years. This started as a zany idea to compete with Twitter, and has evolved into a meaningful platform that fosters the open exchange of per

FreeBSD Scheduling on Hybrid CPUs

Scheduling on Hybrid CPUs Contact: OlivierCertner Motivation For the amd64 architecture, Intel started shipping hybrid CPUs with the rather confidential Lakefield and then more massively with Alder Lake (Gen12). Apart from some models of Alder Lake, it is now impossible to buy an Intel chip that does not have at least P (Performance) and E (Efficiency) cores. ARM first released incarnations of its big.LITTLE arrangement as soon as 2011. DynamIQ is an evolution where big and LITTLE CPUs can b

Inside OS/2 (1987)

by Vaughn Vernon from the December 1987 issue of Computer Language OS/2, Microsoft’s latest addition to its operating system line, could well become the operating system of the next decade for Intel 80286/80386 microcomputers. Its multitasking capabilities, full-featured application programming interface (API), and extendability to future hardware almost guarantee its success. Microsoft sees microcomputing as a platform for office automation hardware and software: The office of the future (re

I don't read your email threads

I Don't Read Your Email Threads 08 Aug, 2025 Email threads have got to be one of the worst possible forms of communication. You've been here before. A perfectly respectable morning is passing by. You're working through your items at a chipper pace maybe humming a song you heard on Spotify that morning. Then, the dreaded email thread comes through. Innocently, you click into the top email. The only text is "[Your Name] see below." I hate this and I bet you do too. Suddenly, you're transporte

Profiling without Source code – how I diagnosed Trackmania stuttering

Profiling without Source code – how I diagnosed Trackmania stuttering A very common side effect of working as a programmer is the constant frustration of not having source code access to all the software you use. Bugs, problems or missing features in your own work can be frustrating enough — you know you’ll have to address all those issues at some point. But it’s even worse when you experience an issue and don’t have the option to solve it. A recent example of this for me was playing the game