Project Ideas for Tock

Ideas

Growth and Outreach

• Tutorial Ideas

  • Security Conference (e.g. Usenix Security)
  • ASPLOS
  • RISC-V related event

• Past Tutorials

  • Rustconf 2017
  • SOSP 2017
  • SenSys 2017
  • SenSys 2018

• Past TockWorlds

  • TockWorld 4 (Princeton, 2019)
  • TockWorld 3 (Berkeley, 2018)
  • TockWorld 2 (Stanford)
  • TockWorld 1 (Berkeley)

Documentation

• Write tutorials (there is a list in tutorials folder readme)

Applications

• End-to-end test-bed deployment
• Smart-watch
  • Pedometer
  • Health monitor
  • ...
• FIDO U2F fob

Drivers and Software

• RPC for multi-MCU platforms
• 6lowpan
• Port open-source Nest Thread implementation
• UDP or TCP
• FAT32/other filesystems
• Framebuffer
• Better bi-directional console driver
• Upgrade LED driver so that other capsules can call on() and off()

SAM4L Drivers

• DAC
• SPI Slave
• PWM
• Internal Flash (https://github.com/helena-project/tock/blob/master/chips/sam4l/src/flashcalw.rs)
• ADC Continuous
• Fix large transactions in USART SPI
• Add read_bytes() to SPI to support large reads

TockOS Features

• Exposing chaining events to userspace.
  • Sleepwalking-like management for enabling low power.
  • Security and crypto chaining for moving data through various crypto peripherals.
• Ability to duplicate driver resources. For example, how would we present two SD cards to userland?
• Better type for handling buffers in drivers/capsules: https://github.com/helena-project/tock/issues/91 and https://github.com/tock/tock/issues/418. Want to be more restrictive in app slices.
• Respawn processes on faults or other conditions: https://github.com/helena-project/tock/issues/66 https://github.com/helena-project/tock/issues/146 https://github.com/helena-project/tock/blob/0bb4ca1d5aac6efc50e26c1393639a24e478b10f/kernel/src/process.rs#L274
• Low power architecture
• Sub kernels. For instance to support a carrier board for hail without defining an entirely new kernel.
• GPIO toggling as part of the Debug! interface
• Add hooks to help GDB discover userland processes their symbol files

Infrastructure

• Static analysis https://github.com/tock/tock/issues/517
• VM with Tock and toolchain installed https://github.com/helena-project/tock/issues/109
  • Something with a script so that it could be edited and re-generated as needed.
• Port LLVM with PIC support to Rust
• Support CMSIS DSP in userland apps: http://www.keil.com/pack/doc/CMSIS/DSP/html/index.html
• Run kernel directly in interrupt handling context
• Port to STM32 (basis for Nucleo)
• Port to non-ARM architectures (e.g. RISC-V, AVR, ...)
• Linux/x86 runtime for testing
• Process deployment
  • Radio/propagation scheme
  • Signature scheme
• Tock software bootloader for SAM4L written in Rust.
• Simulation board target that runs natively on host

Hardware

• Minituarized imix (with fewer features, of course). Perhaps Particle Photon form factor. (https://github.com/helena-project/tock/tree/master/boards/hail)

Research

• Kernel "processes"
• Jumbo-capsules (independent kernel threads, each isolated internally with capsules)
• Access control strategies
  • In the kernel
    • Information-flow-control in capsules
  • For processes
• Remote Syscalls for a Distributed OS