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Re:HelenOS: portable microkernel-based multiserver operating... by snvzz on Friday August 18, 2017 @02:03PM (#15048394)
>uncontended timings

In the case of seL4, they are WCET (Worst Case Execution Time). That's as "contended" as it can possibly get.

They do provide formal proof of WCET, so these numbers are solid.

Re:HelenOS: portable microkernel-based multiserver operating... by aidenn0 on Friday August 18, 2017 @02:24PM (#15048543)
Are those really WCET? A L3 miss on an i7 4770 is ~60ns and they show 90ns total execution time. If that's true it's incredibly impressive.

[edit]

Also formal WCET analysis for various IPCs is really great and not something you can "bolt on" to a kernel not designed for it.

Re:HelenOS: portable microkernel-based multiserver operating... by snvzz on Friday August 18, 2017 @02:45PM (#15048718)
You might want to look into: http://ts.data61.csiro.au/projects/seL4/

Specifically:

Bernard Blackham, Yao Shi, Sudipta Chattopadhyay, Abhik Roychoudhury and Gernot Heiser

Timing analysis of a protected operating system kernel

IEEE Real-Time Systems Symposium, pp. 339-348, Vienna, Austria, November, 2011

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TL;DR: They assume worst case for cache misses.

e.g.: "The latency of a read or write to physical memory on this platform was measured to be 80–100 cycles; in the static analysis we assume a 100-cycle penalty for all cache misses."

Re:HelenOS: portable microkernel-based multiserver operating... by aidenn0 on Sunday August 20, 2017 @04:59PM (#15060230)
That would mean ~2 cache lines are accessed for an IPC call, plus another 130 cycles for instructions. That's very impressive.