magenta/docs/magenta/mg_and_lk.md

Magenta and LK

Magenta is based on LK but over time it will diverge from it significantly. As it does this document should be updated accordingly.

LK is a Kernel designed for small systems typically used in embedded applications. It is good alternative to commercial offerings like FreeRTOS or ThreadX. Such systems often have a very limited amount of ram, a fixed set of peripherals and a bounded set of tasks.

On the other hand, Magenta targets modern phones and modern personal computers with fast processors, non-trivial amounts of ram with arbitrary peripherals doing open ended computation.

More specifically, some the visible differences are:

• Magenta has user-mode support lib/lkuser, lib/magenta, upstream LK does not.
• Magenta has objects, they are manipulated by user mode via handles.
• Magenta has a capability-based security model. In LK all code is trusted.
• Magenta supports at the kernel level, the Mojo application model.