KEI

A Rust OS kernel for industrial IoT edge devices.

English · 简体中文 · 繁體中文 · 日本語 · 한국어 · Français · Español · Русский · العربية

What is KEI?

KEI is a Rust OS kernel for ARM64 and RISC-V edge devices. It also ships a #![no_std] library for embassy sensor nodes.

KEI is derived from Asterinas, a Rust framekernel. It adds ARM64 board support, virtio-gpu display, industrial drivers, and a sensor-node wire protocol — while staying independent of upstream release cycles.

flowchart TB
    subgraph Gateway["KEI kernel"]
        KERN["RTOS-grade kernel\nARM64 / RISC-V"]
        NET["Network stack\nMQTT · WebSocket · HTTP"]
        DRV["Industrial drivers\nModbus · CAN · S7comm"]
    end
    subgraph Sensors["Sensor nodes"]
        EMB["embassy MCU firmware\nusing kei no_std library"]
    end
    SENSORS -->|"kei wire protocol\n(UART / RS-485)"| Gateway
    Gateway -->|"WebSocket / MQTT"| CLOUD["Cloud platform"]

Loading

What's in this repo?

Component	Location	What it does
KEI kernel	workspace root	Rust OS kernel for ARM64/RISC-V. Syscall ABI, virtio-gpu, framebuffer, network stack.
kei library	packages/kei/	#![no_std] library for embassy sensor nodes: wire protocol, manifest schema, HAL traits.

Quick start

Kernel:

just build        # Build for default board (NanoPi R3S)
just test-all     # Boot-test all architectures in QEMU

Library:

cd packages/kei
cargo test --all-features    # 20 tests
cargo run --example host_demo  # Wire protocol demo

See the library guide and benchmark results for details.

Desktop rendering (aris)

The aris-render desktop (Blitz HTML/CSS layout + Vello CPU rasterization → /dev/fb0) requires the aris repository. Point kei at your aris checkout via the ARIS_REPO environment variable:

cp .env.example .env
# Edit .env and set ARIS_REPO to your aris repo path, e.g.:
#   ARIS_REPO=../aris        (sibling directory — the default)
#   ARIS_REPO=/home/me/aris  (absolute POSIX path)
#   ARIS_REPO=D:\source\aris (absolute Windows path)

Build commands follow a two-level convention (just build <object>):

just build browser aarch64   # compile aris browser engine only (musl cross)
just build desktop aarch64   # full stack: kernel + browser + initramfs
just render aarch64          # launch QEMU with aris-rendered desktop

The justfile auto-loads .env (via set dotenv-load). If ARIS_REPO is unset, it falls back to ../aris (sibling directory layout).

License

SySL-1.0 for KEI's own code. Vendored Asterinas code under MPL-2.0. See LICENSE and LICENSE-MPL.