[CSDN Editor's Note] As the key to the development of open source, open source ecological construction still lacks enough successful precedents in China. How should the open source operating system ecosystem be built? In this issue of "Near Craftsman", Yang Qibin, who focuses on the ecological co-construction of the OpenHarmony operating system, shares his practical experience with us.
Guests interviewed in this issue:
Yang Qibin Vice President and CTO of Hunan Kaihong Zhigu Digital Industry Development Co., Ltd.
He once presided over the OpenHarmony industry operating system architecture design work. Master of Hohai University. He has more than 20 years of experience in operating system research and development. He was a former member of Huawei 2012 Lab and was responsible for the architecture design of Hongmeng operating system. He has worked for Nokia, Huawei and other Fortune 500 companies. Kaihong Zhigu is a wholly-owned subsidiary of Tuowei Information, fully carrying its ecological strategy and focusing on providing industry-oriented OpenHarmony distribution and software and hardware intelligent services.
interviewer:
Tang Xiaoyin Executive Editor of CSDN "New Programmer"
Coordinating and planning the "New Programmer" series of books, "China Developers Annual Survey Report", editor-in-chief of the "2022 China Open Source Development Blue Book", "China AI Application Developer Report" and "China Open Source Application Developer Report" series of reports, and has served in several Editor-in-chief of the Open Source and Developer Conference, open source enthusiast.
Author | He Miao
Listing | CSDN (ID: CSDNnews)
The first time I met Yang Qibin was at an industry open source conference. This medium-sized, slightly thin operating system technology veteran had a calm and persistent face, and a pair of eyes that glowed when talking about operating systems. He said: "I have a soft spot for operating systems."
Because of this, he switched from "automation" major to "operating system" and entered Huawei 2012 laboratory to participate in the development of HarmonyOS. After "retiring" from Huawei, Yang Qibin entered Kaihong Zhigu, which focuses on Hongmeng ecological strategy, and devoted himself to the joint construction of OpenHarmony open source ecosystem. In the blink of an eye, Yang Qibin has delved deeper and deeper into operating system technology and has become more determined in its ecological construction. He firmly believes that the secret to the longevity of an operating system is inseparable from open source and excellent ecological construction, and the biggest advantage of Android's success lies in open source.
Open source is here and swallowing up software with an unstoppable force. What should be the path of the operating system? What changes does open source bring to operating systems? What are the little-known stories behind the birth of “Hongmeng” that attracted national attention? Let us follow the perspective of Kaihong Zhigu Vice President and CTO Yang Qibin, get closer to the world of operating systems, and explore his indissoluble bond with operating systems and open source.
Yang Qibin Vice President and CTO of Hunan Kaihong Zhigu Digital Industry Development Co., Ltd.
"I have a soft spot for operating systems"
Tang Xiaoyin: Most developers in China are concentrated on the application side. Talents for underlying operating systems are scarce and learning is difficult. How did you get on the road to operating systems?
Yang Qibin: After graduating from school in March 2002, I worked for three Fortune 500 companies. At that time, I was mainly responsible for the architectural design of mobile phone systems. RTOS was often used in my work and I was very interested in it, so that I later became interested in it. I have a soft spot for operating systems.
There is indeed a difference between "automation" and "operating system", and the RTOS I came into contact with in the early days was a real-time operating system, which was more biased towards the underlying terminal. This type of operating system is much simpler than the operating systems of rich devices such as tablets and mobile phones. It wasn't until I came into contact with the mature Android system that I realized that this was the case, although it is relatively simple in terms of overall architecture. The underlying technologies of the operating system are inherently interconnected. After understanding its system architecture and the principles of communication between systems, I found that the operating system is not complicated, but it is a lot of knowledge to expand.
Tang Xiaoyin: How did you start participating in the development of HarmonyOS? As a witness and participant, what are the unforgettable things in this process?
Yang Qibin: In July 2011, I joined Huawei's operating system department, which was then the Euler Development Department. At Huawei, operating systems are divided into three categories: terminal operating systems, server operating systems, and embedded operating systems. The openEuler we are familiar with today belongs to the operating system in the server field. Later, CBG (Huawei Consumer Business Group) needed support, and I immediately entered the CBG department to specialize in terminal operating systems. The famous HarmonyOS operating system was born here.
As early as 2018, Huawei began to develop its own smart terminal operating system. As global technology competition intensifies, the dual-system HarmonyOS distribution began to be developed, and I also participated in its architecture design. HarmonyOS's open source strategy also began to be formulated at that time. In September 2019, Huawei officially made it open source.
Whether from the perspective of the development of the operating system field or from the perspective of national strategy, China needs a self-developed operating system to support existing terminal equipment, but it is a pity that it is truly capable and willing to do this. There are not many companies. As a HarmonyOS participant, I feel so lucky to be able to participate in building an operating system for terminal devices with truly national independent intellectual property rights. Although the development of Hongmeng's ecology has not yet reached its ideal, I believe that it will surpass the current Android in the future. One day, the concept of the Internet of Everything will be deeply rooted in the hearts of the people, and OpenHarmony will also appear in thousands of households.
Tang Xiaoyin: In the "2021-2022 China Developer Survey Report" released by CSDN, developers pay far more attention to HarmonyOS than other operating systems. What is the relationship between HarmonyOS and OpenHarmony? How is its commercial use?
Yang Qibin: Huawei has three major tracks: First, HarmonyOS, which is a commercial distribution and a source of Huawei’s cash flow. Second, OpenHarmony can be used for some basic technology development, so it is open sourced to the community and jointly built by developers. It is the most basic software that everyone can use. The other is the enabling department, which exists to help all ecological partners build the OpenHarmony ecosystem together.
Since rich devices such as tablets and mobile phones have very high requirements for system stability and security, and the scenarios are complex, OpenHarmony still needs to grow according to current standards.
From building Hongmeng to co-building the Hongmeng open source ecosystem
Tang Xiaoyin: After working at Huawei for many years and experiencing the development of HarmonyOS and the open source of OpenHarmony, why did you choose to leave? Why did he come out of the mountain and enter Kaihongzhi Valley again?
Yang Qibin: In April 2021, after the overall framework design of HarmonyOS was completed, due to age and other reasons, I applied for retirement after ten years at Huawei. After leaving Huawei for a while, my retirement life was interrupted by an accidental phone call: "There is a partner company that is developing the Hongmeng ecosystem, and it very much needs the support of Hongmeng system architects. Are you willing to give it a try?"
I have a soft spot for operating systems and am very familiar with Hongmeng’s technical architecture. I think this is a good try. The opportunity to make something innovative or competitive is very attractive to me. At that time, Kaihong Zhigu had already regarded OpenHarmony as the strategic direction of the company, and all business was based on this. I intuitively felt that this was a good direction. I can play my part in working towards the prosperity of OpenHarmony's ecosystem.
Tang Xiaoyin: How is the progress of OpenHarmony ecological construction? What progress has been made in opening Hongzhi Valley?
Yang Qibin: The Open Atomic Open Source Foundation may be more aware of the overall progress of the OpenHarmony ecosystem. I will only talk about my personal understanding here. This year, the capabilities of the OpenHarmony system base have continued to increase. At present, it has basically built a relatively complete capability system for light and small devices, and has begun to gradually invest in the construction of basic capabilities for rich devices. It is expected that the 4.0 version launched next year will have larger rich devices. Ability enhancements and upgrades.
Kaihong Zhigu's progress in the OpenHarmony ecological co-construction mainly includes two aspects: "Education on Harmony OS" released on April 28 this year and "Highway on Harmony OS" released on June 7. Based on these two distributions, we have made 4 commercial products including the Zaihong controller, and jointly developed 8 commercial products with the ecosystem. In addition, we have also developed two development boards. Currently, the Niobe U4 and Niobe 407 development boards have passed XTS certification, and both have been integrated into the community code backbone, giving relatively large feedback to the community.
Tang Xiaoyin: What are your concepts and expectations for the construction of an open source ecosystem?
Yang Qibin: My philosophy is very simple, which is to originate from open source and give back to open source. If you can only ask for things, you will not be able to do well in ecology. Only by using open source software, digesting it, and then giving back to open source can the open source community prosper and develop, and the open source ecosystem continue to grow. Communities often have their own standards and specifications to ensure code quality and usability. We must believe in the power of the community and the power of developers. At present, Kaihong Zhigu has its own open source strategy, hoping to help other manufacturers to do an open source ecology together while giving back to the community.
Some thoughts from decades of working on operating systems
Tang Xiaoyin: The development of operating systems often follows this pattern: in its heyday, various mobile operating systems blossomed everywhere, but in the end only one or two remained and became mainstream. Based on your years of research on mobile operating systems, one operating system What is the core of the system’s longevity?
Yang Qibin: As two enduring operating systems, iOS (Apple) and Android (Android) are very representative. Apple's success largely depends on its complete business model and ecology, so I won't go into it here. When the Android system was born, many people were skeptical about its development. Looking back at the reasons for its success, I think its biggest advantage lies in open source, and the Java framework was chosen as the basis of open source. As we all know, there are a lot of Java developers. This way, its ecosystem can be grafted onto the new platform very smoothly. As more and more developers develop related applications on the platform, it can also continue to promote the optimization and iteration of the Android operating system. . The importance of ecology to the operating system is self-evident. For a mobile operating system to succeed, the prerequisite is to have an ecology.
Tang Xiaoyin: Ten years ago was the golden age of mobile Internet, but many good operating systems at that time have now disappeared. What kind of warning does this leave us?
Yang Qibin: Many good operating systems are gradually disappearing. The biggest problem may be that they do not consider user acceptance from a long-term perspective. For example, HP's webOS operating system surprised many people when it was released, but in the end it was forced to be sold. The biggest problem was that it failed to see what users really needed. Although webOS solves the cross-platform problem, its H5-based development method is slower than Java, and the disadvantage is very obvious. If an operating system does not pay attention to user experience issues, it will most likely be eliminated in the end. Secondly, the openness of the operating system is also very important. The Android system is open, so more people participate in it, and the system's innovation capabilities are also constantly improved. On the contrary, this is also the reason why everyone now criticizes Apple for less and less system innovation. Collective wisdom is more powerful and innovative than individual wisdom. With more people participating in the Hongmeng system, it will be more innovative than Android, so it must be open.
Tang Xiaoyin: Android is still a mainstream operating system, although its fragmentation and security issues have been criticized. How does OpenHarmony circumvent such issues?
Yang Qibin: The security of Android has indeed been criticized. Since it directly accesses the driver through API, once the application crashes, the driver will also crash, eventually making the entire system unusable. This is unreasonable, so when we originally designed OpenHarmony, we referred to the design scheme of mature Android systems and implemented decoupling design through IPC. In addition, if you want to solve security problems, you need to ensure application security. OpenHarmony has a set of signature mechanisms. Corresponding signatures must be made from the regular application market before they can be installed and run on relevant devices, thus ensuring overall security.
Domestic Android engineers often keep their service backgrounds alive so that they can receive the required information in a timely manner. OpenHarmony does not allow this. This part was designed with reference to iOS practices. But more flexible. Engineers can apply for service running time in the application background if necessary, but are not allowed to keep it alive in the background. Because there are too many services running in the background, if there is no limit at all, the memory will never be enough.
For users, a system that is too large is actually a problem. This problem can be solved through atomic services similar to small programs. Users can use them immediately and do not need to install them. So we need to make this application very small, download the application from the cloud, install it on the device and open it directly. An internal evaluation was done at that time, and it was found that a 5M-sized application could be downloaded, installed, and started running in two seconds at 5G network speed. However, users still feel that the two-second experience is not very good, but achieving millisecond-level response requires relatively high network speed.
Tang Xiaoyin: From the perspective of the Internet of Everything, Apple's operating system may be very convenient to interconnect with its complete ecosystem, but HarmonyOS connects to a wide variety of devices, and the user experience may not be as smooth as the connection of a full set of Apple devices. How to solve this kind of problem?
Yang Qibin: We are considering this issue. The idea is to realize the Hongmengization of the equipment through a central device through a transfer method. Whether the method is mature remains to be practiced. Huawei has been working on Hongmeng Intelligent Connect, which means making non-intelligent products intelligent by adding intelligent connectivity modules to them and then connecting them to the IoT cloud. It’s not difficult from a technical perspective, but Hongmeng’s ecosystem is not perfect yet, and we hope to attract as many developers as possible to participate.
Current enterprise business is often driven by "two wheels of data and application", and applications require many component capabilities to support them. Considering that various industries have different APIs, compatibility is more complicated, so we hope to abstract the corresponding component capabilities. This reduces the difficulty of development in various industries and makes it easier for developers to develop desired applications. When it is easier for them to develop a variety of innovative businesses in the simplest way, they will be more willing to participate in ecological construction.
At the end of the conversation, Yang Qibin shared with us the technical direction and next small goals he is concerned about. As a pragmatic technology veteran, his concerns are equally pragmatic. In addition to paying attention to the general direction of technology, he also likes to enter various communities to understand the mainstream technologies commonly used by developers.
"Recently, I have been trying to optimize I/O and try to improve product performance by reducing the switching between user space and kernel space. I am also paying attention to microkernel-related technologies and trying to make a Demo to verify the switch from the current Hongmeng kernel to a microkernel. Is it feasible? Small devices have very high performance requirements. If the memory is too small, things that can be done in 5ms may take 10ms. Overall, the performance will be doubled, which makes it difficult for users to accept.”
What he did, as he said: consider the needs and acceptance of users from a long-term perspective.
This article comes from the "Near Craftsman" column. "Near the Craftsman" is an interview column launched by CSDN, which means "get close to the craftsmen". Get to know the tool creators and technical managers who are deeply involved in open source, cloud, AIoT, root technology, digital transformation, and cutting-edge technology. How do they view the current development work, share the characteristics of the tools they have crafted, and analyze the development status and future trends of the entire industry.
To this end, based on open source, cloud, AIoT, root technology, digital transformation, cutting-edge technology and other fields, if you and your team have reporting needs, or if you have insights on technology trends, or in-depth application practices, scenario solutions, etc. For new insights, welcome to contact CSDN to contribute, contact information: WeChat (hanbb120, please note contribution + name + company position), email ([email protected]).
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