Open Kernel Labs was established as a commercial entity in Australia just nine months ago, the result of research work at NICTA’s Embedded, Real-Time and Operating Systems Research Program.
OK Labs (as it is called) has now moved on, establishing its corporate offices – including business development and field application engineering functions in the US as it headquarters.
The company said research and development functions would remain in Australia.
OK Lab’s product, OKL4 is an advanced microkernel and “supports a structured approach to building trusted and secure systems, and is being successfully deployed in a number of commercial consumer mobile devices,” the company said.
In a statement, NICTA chief executive Dr David Skellern did not express disappointment at the company’s operations heading offshore.
“With the incorporation of OK, NICTA can claim another success of its program to commercialize technology developed at its resource-rich development labs,” Dr Skellern said.
“OK is the first spin-out of NICTA to be incorporated in the United States and the company begins its commercial life with a revenue stream as well as strong interest from large global companies.”
Secure, reliable and trustworthy embedded systems software for mobile and consumer electronics requires strong, hardware-enforced protection boundaries around system components, enforced by a trustworthy microkernel.
OKL4 was initially developed under the direction of Dr Gernot Heiser, the chief technology officer and co-founder of OK. Dr Heiser is also professor of operating systems at the University of New South Wales (UNSW) and a program leader at NICTA
With additional input from early customers, the open source community and PhD candidates at UNSW, this team has produced the highest performing microkernel operating system available today, he said.
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