It is written in assembly to achieve high-performance computing with minimal footprint[3][4] with a "just enough operating system" (JeOS) approach.[5] The operating system is primarily targeted towards virtualized environments for cloud computing, or HPCs due to its design as a lightweight kernel (LWK). It could be used as a unikernel.
It was inspired by another OS written in assembly, MikeOS,[2] and it is a recent example of an operating system that is not written in C or C++, nor based on Unix-like kernels.[6]
Multitasking on BareMetal is unusual for modern operating systems. BareMetal uses an internal work queue that all CPU cores poll. A task added to the work queue will be processed by any available CPU core in the system and will execute until completion, which results in no context switchoverhead.[8]
An API is documented[9] but, in line with its philosophy, the OS does not enforce entry points for system calls (e.g.: no call gates or other safety mechanisms).
A mostly-complete C++11 Standard Library was designed and developed for working in ring 0.[12] The main goal of such library is providing, on a library level, an alternative to hardware memory protection used in classical OSes, with help of carefully designed classes.[13]
A Rust program demonstration was added to the programs in November 2014, demonstrating the ability to write Rust programs for BareMetal OS.[14]
Networking
TCP/IP stack
A TCP/IP stack was the #1 feature request.[15] A port of lwIP written in C was announced in October 2014.[16]
minIP,[17] a minimalist IP stack in ANSI C able to provide enough functionalities to serve a simple static webpage, is being developed as a proof of concept to learn the fundamentals in preparation for an x86-64 assembly re-write planned for the future.
References
^Seyler, Ian. "kernel.asm". BareMetal OS GitHub repository. Retrieved May 24, 2017.
