Google experiments bring Fuchsia OS to Android devices

JAKARTA – Google is developing microfuchsia, a lightweight version of the Fuchsia operating system that currently runs on the Google Nest Hub. Microfuchsia is designed to run on virtual machines, and Google is apparently experimenting with running them on Android devices.

Fuchsia OS is an open source operating system like Android and Chrome OS. However, unlike these two operating systems, Fuchsia is not built on the Linux kernel. Fuchsia uses Zircon, which according to Google consists of a kernel and a small set of user services, drivers, and bibliographies required for basic system functionality such as booting.

The MIlike Zircon microkernel architecture allows Fuchsia to reduce the amount of trusted code running in the system to only a few basic functions, which can improve security and stability by reducing the amount of high-privilege code compared to a regular monolithic kernel.

Rumors from mid-2018 mentioned that Google had ambitious plans to ship Fuchsia OS to smartphones, computers, and smart home devices. While that goal still seems a ways off (if not canceled altogether), Google has successfully launched the operating system on smart home devices, starting with the first-generation Nest Hub in 2021.

Tim Kemudian already owns a Nest Hub Max, and the Nest Hub already comes installed on Fuchsia OS, allowing it to get up and running quickly.

To expand Fuchsia beyond smart home devices, Google is working on projects like Starnix to run unmodified Linux binaries on Fuchsia devices. Additionally, since late April of this year, Google has been working on a new project called microfuchsia that aims to enable Fuchsia to be extended to existing devices using virtualization. Microfuchsia, according to Google, is a build of the Fuchsia operating system that is designed for virtual machines and is designed to run on virtualized solutions like QEMU and pKVM.

pKVM is a hypervisor for the Android Virtualization Framework (AVF), a feature that Google is introducing in Android 13 on specific devices. Google is developing AVF and pKVM to run specific types of tasks in a securely isolated environment. To do this work, Google created a very stripped-down version of Android called microroid, which contains only the core Android services, tools, and a minimal bibliography.

Although it has not been confirmed, it is possible that Google intends to use microfuchsia in the same way as microdroids. In other words, Google may intend microfuchsia to handle tasks that must be safely performed by the host operating system, in this case Android. Microdroids already work to do this, but perhaps microfuchsia will do it sooner or more safely (or both).

The patches were recently submitted to the Open Source Android Project (AOSP), creating the basis for new APEX files that will include microfuchsia. APEX is the file format used by Project Mainline to package system components, and APEX files are the ones that load all the AVF-related binaries on supported Android devices. Although com.android files.microfuchsia APEX is not yet available, references to its presence in AOSP and code found in the Fuchsia Gerrit are very interesting.

It’s unclear at this point what Google’s plans are for micro-flash, but developments will continue to be monitored to find out if this project will actually be implemented.

Tag: android