It looks like Alphabet Inc. (aka Google) may be working on an entirely new open-source operating system. But the company is not exactly making a big deal about it yet.

Dubbed “Fuchsia,” the new OS is quietly being built in Google’s GitHub code repository, and there is already one glaringly obvious difference between Fuchsia and Google’s other operating systems, Chrome OS and Android: Fuchsia is not built off a Linux kernel. Instead, it looks like Fuchsia is based on Magenta, a “microkernel” which itself is based on another kernel called LittleKernel (LK).

“LK is a Kernel designed for small systems typically used in embedded applications. It is good alternative to commercial offerings like FreeRTOS or ThreadX,” Google explained in a document linked to from Fuchsia’s GitHub. “Such systems often have a very limited amount of ram, a fixed set of peripherals and a bounded set of tasks. On the other hand, Magenta targets modern phones and modern personal computers with fast processors, non-trivial amounts of ram with arbitrary peripherals doing open ended computation.”

In other words, Fuchsia is built off a kernel that is designed to work particularly well in powerful, compact devices, possibly hinting that it could be designed with the Internet of Things in mind. This would not be a surprising move for Google, as the company has already thrown its weight around in the IoT sphere, most notably with its acquisition of Nest Labs for $3.2 billion in 2014.

Recently, Google has also been working to bridge the gap between Chrome OS and Android, so there is the possibility that Fuchsia could be the company’s next step in building an integrated platform.

Of course, Google has yet to confirm the actual purpose behind its new operating system or to even formally acknowledge its existence at all, but since Fuchsia’s code is currently posted to GitHub for the world to see, it looks like Google will be going the open source route with the OS, which means that someone out there could figure out what it is for before Google feels like sharing.

Photo by Kent Wang