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This guide walks developers with C and assembly experience through building a simple bare‑metal operating system that runs directly on ARM64 hardware without any existing OS or bootloader, offering a hands‑on introduction to low‑level system concepts for students, embedded engineers, and computer‑system enthusiasts.
The article explains Linux kernel read‑write semaphores, detailing the classic rw_semaphore’s optimistic‑spinning and hand‑off mechanisms, then introduces the per‑CPU rwsem for ARM64, which replaces global counters with per‑CPU data and an RCU fast‑path to cut cache‑coherency traffic at the cost of losing optimistic spinning.
This tutorial details how to set up a cross‑compilation toolchain on Ubuntu 20.04, install QEMU, build a BusyBox‑based root filesystem, compile and configure the ARM64 Linux kernel, create a simulated disk, share files between host and guest, and perform kernel debugging using GDB and Eclipse.
The 18th China Linux Kernel Developer Conference (CLK 2023) will be held in Shenzhen on October 28, 2023, hosted by OPPO, and invites Linux kernel developers to submit technical papers (open call from September 22, deadline October 10) on topics such as architecture, scheduling, memory, storage, networking, virtualization, performance, testing and kernel use in IoT, mobile, automotive, cloud and AI, with required author bio, title and abstract.
This article, based on ByteDance STE’s 2022 Linux Kernel Developer Conference talk, explains the HVO (HugeTLB vmemmap Optimization) feature that dramatically reduces struct page memory for huge pages, details its latest enhancements, cross‑architecture support, usage steps, performance trade‑offs, and future plans.
The article details how Linux’s function‑graph ftrace tracer works on ARM64, explaining required kernel configs, how -pg inserts _mcount calls, the runtime patching of ftrace_graph_caller, register usage for argument passing, and return handling, and why shadow‑call‑stack must be disabled to enable precise call‑graph and timing analysis.
Linus Torvalds announced the stable Linux 5.19 kernel, built on an Apple M2‑based ARM64 MacBook with Asahi Linux support, highlighting new features such as LoongArch support, FAT32 timestamps, AMD BRS sampling, RISC‑V 32‑bit compatibility, Zstd firmware compression, and a substantial increase in graphics driver code.
On arm64 Linux kernels (e.g., 5.10.27), the mlock system call marks VMAs with VM_LOCKED, forces page faults, sets the PG_mlocked flag and moves pages into the unevictable LRU so they cannot be reclaimed, while munlock clears these flags and returns pages to regular LRU lists, guaranteeing resident memory for latency‑sensitive applications.
The article outlines the major features of .NET 7 Preview 1, including nullable annotations for Microsoft.Extensions libraries, enhancements to tracing APIs, code‑generation improvements, dynamic PGO and Arm64 support, p/invoke source generation, new System.Text.Json APIs, and expanded hot‑reload capabilities.
KVM turns the Linux kernel into a hypervisor that, together with QEMU, provides hardware‑assisted CPU and memory virtualization on ARM64 platforms, using EL2‑based Stage‑2 address translation, while offering multiple I/O virtualization methods such as emulation, virtio, device passthrough, and shared assignment for flexible guest performance and isolation.
The QQ Music/Karaoke team migrated their Android app from 32‑bit to Arm64‑v8a by reconfiguring Gradle builds, recompiling or replacing over 120 native libraries, extending the dynamic‑resource loader for ABI selection, implementing ABI‑aware update channels, and fixing issues such as library path limits, I/O reliability, camera latency, and WebView cache corruption, completing the transition in early 2021.
This article explains how to write and integrate ARM64 inline assembly in iOS applications to implement anti‑debugging checks, discusses the syntax, constraints, calling conventions, common pitfalls, and provides complete assembly‑only solutions for secure runtime detection.
The article explains Linux kernel virtual memory management on 64‑bit ARM64 Android systems, detailing user‑ and kernel‑space address layout, physical vs. linear addresses, allocation mechanisms such as brk and mmap, common allocators, key structures like mm_struct and vm_area_struct, and the functions that control mmap layout and unmapped‑area selection.