This was just brought to my attention — Silverspring’s Utopia project. Mathieulh recently had the opportunity to talk with Silverspring and share some of the nitty-gritty…

The Utopia project is an open source lightweight kernel for the PSP. It will be optimized/dedicated for custom firmware and homebrew development. The kernel is planned to occupy a little more than 1MB of RAM with a 2MB maximum. Everything will be fully documented with the necessary tool base for debugging, development, etc… For both developers and homebrew users.

The Utopia kernel is not based on Linux, FreeBSD, or any other open source project (unlike uClinux for example). Utopia is based on the reverse engineering of the 3.71 IPL. Once completed and stable the Utopia kernel will be implemented as a new operative mode in future custom firmwares.

What Utopia won’t do/won’t feature:

• It’s not meant to run Sony’s code; current homebrew or games won’t run on it
• It will not feature UMD drive support of any kind
• It will not feature any kind of DRM functionality
• It will most likely not feature any kirk engine support
• WLAN is planned, but not a priority at this point
• No VSH or graphic interface of any kind is to be included or officially supported by the Utopia project. Utopia is ONLY the kernel; if you want to code your own shell on top of it, you may do so.

‘Tis very cool. Perhaps Utopia will open the door to a whole new world of homebrew. Stay tuned.

- source: lan