Isn't this already invented and called an iPad or Android? (Or more seriously, this is called NaCL).
But you want to have OpenGL (with shader compiler security bugs you could drive a truck through!). You want to read from cameras and disks, and post notifications and go fullscreen and read/write audio samples and do all the other unsafe things that browsers are currently implementing.
The syscall interface that's explored in the paper doesn't do any of those things; software rendering only, etc.
The challenge in this work is exposing the advanced high-end functionality (GL, media, window system, etc) in a way that's secure and can't be abused. The challenge isn't in defining a syscall interface that lets you run all-software apps (NaCL has solved that problem, but so did the JVM and qemu...). I feel like this paper completely ignores the real issues, and focuses on problems that have been solved well enough or are already understood...
Eratosthenes is basically NaCL taken to the logical extreme. NaCL itself doesn't go far enough, because it still exposes the traditional browser APIs, when really they should also be run in NaCL. They are fundamentally the same approach, but applied with different amounts.
But you want to have OpenGL (with shader compiler security bugs you could drive a truck through!). You want to read from cameras and disks, and post notifications and go fullscreen and read/write audio samples and do all the other unsafe things that browsers are currently implementing.
The syscall interface that's explored in the paper doesn't do any of those things; software rendering only, etc.
The challenge in this work is exposing the advanced high-end functionality (GL, media, window system, etc) in a way that's secure and can't be abused. The challenge isn't in defining a syscall interface that lets you run all-software apps (NaCL has solved that problem, but so did the JVM and qemu...). I feel like this paper completely ignores the real issues, and focuses on problems that have been solved well enough or are already understood...