Stanford's Cinder OS tightens mobile power control

14.04.2009
Stanford University researchers are designing an operating system from the ground up to handle the power and security requirements of mobile devices.

The Cinder operating system is already working on an Arm chip, and members of the team are working on making it run on the HTC G1 handset, according to Philip Levis, a Stanford assistant professor. Levis spoke about Cinder at the Stanford Computer Forum on Tuesday.

If an application isn't running as fast as the user wants, a Cinder-based phone could include a button to boost the energy allocated to that application, Levis said. Cinder also could allow users to download any code and run it safely on their phones in a "sandbox" mode.

Levis, another Stanford professor and a team of students are designing Cinder from scratch because the time has come for a mobile operating system that isn't derived from other platforms, he told the gathering of students and industry professionals. Using Linux as an example, he said operating systems designed for larger hardware platforms aren't ideal for mobile devices because many requirements are significantly different.