"The goal was to design an operating system that would stand the test of time — portable, modular, extensible, and robust."
— Dave Cutler & Helen Custer, Inside Windows NT (1993)

MicaNT is a modern, clean-room, sovereign operating system executive inspired by Dave Cutler's legendary MICA and PRISM architectures. Engineered from first principles in ISO C++23, MicaNT implements a fully compatible NT kernel executive with sub-32MB memory footprint, zero telemetry, and hardened determinism.

+--------------------------------------------------------------------------+
|                        USER MODE (Ring 3)                                |
|  +------------------------+  +-------------------+  +------------------+ |
|  | Native Win32 Subsystem |  | Win32k/GDI/USER   |  | PrismX / Prism3D | |
|  | Subsystem Servers      |  | Window Surfaces   |  | Direct3D Engine  | |
|  +------------------------+  +-------------------+  +------------------+ |
|  +---------------------------------------------------------------------+ |
|  |                  NTDLL.DLL / Native System Call Stubs               | |
+--+---------------------------------------------------------------------+--+
                                |  Syscall / Fast System Call (sysenter)
+-------------------------------v------------------------------------------+
|                        KERNEL MODE (Ring 0)                              |
|  +---------------------+  +--------------------+  +--------------------+ |
|  | Process & Thread    |  | Virtual Memory     |  | Object Manager &   | |
|  | Executive (Ps)      |  | Manager (Mm)       |  | Security (Ob / Se) | |
|  +---------------------+  +--------------------+  +--------------------+ |
|  +---------------------+  +--------------------+  +--------------------+ |
|  | I/O System & WDDM   |  | Hardware           |  | HAL & Architecture | |
|  | Executive (Io/Dxg)  |  | Virtualization     |  | Abstraction        | |
|  +---------------------+  +--------------------+  +--------------------+ |
+--------------------------------------------------------------------------+

• Zero proprietary Microsoft source code.
• Authored exclusively from open architecture documentation (Inside Windows NT, Windows Internals by Russinovich et al., Microsoft Open Specifications, and POSIX/ISO standards).
• Guarded by continuous automated Clean-Room Sentinel CI regression auditing.

• Strongly-typed handles, RAII kernel object management, compile-time Bitmask enums, concepts, and zero-overhead abstractions.
• 46 comprehensive test suites passing across memory management, scheduling, APC/DPC delivery, WDDM thunking, Direct3D 11/12, and Vulkan 1.3 rasterization.

• Named in homage to Dave Cutler’s 1988 PRISM RISC project.
• PrismX: Presentation pipeline, DXGI swapchains (IDXGISwapChain, IDXGIFactory1), WDDM kernel thunking (dxgkrnl.sys), and flip-model backbuffering.
• Prism3D: Shading pipeline, pipeline state objects, sub-pixel Gouraud RGB color interpolation, floating-point Z-buffer depth testing, and software reference rasterizer.
• Built using clean-room integration referencing Microsoft's MIT-licensed open-source DirectX-Headers and DirectXTK.

• Standard Khronos Vulkan ICD Loader (vulkan-1.dll) with automatic registry driver discovery under \Registry\Machine\SOFTWARE\Khronos\Vulkan\Drivers.
• Sovereign PrismVK driver exposing a high-performance Discrete GPU (1.3.0 compliance, 8192 MB dedicated VRAM, 16384 MB shared GTT, 16 graphics/compute queues).
• Native Win32 surface presentation (VK_KHR_win32_surface and VK_KHR_swapchain).

• Cold-boots in milliseconds into a native command console or high-resolution UEFI GOP graphical desktop.
• Requires less than 32 megabytes of RAM.
• Absolutely zero outbound telemetry, profiling, or cloud tethering.

• Showcase Website: https://micant.barrersoftware.com
• Core Repository: https://github.com/MicaNT-Kernel/MicaNT
• Ko-fi Support: If you appreciate independent systems programming and sovereign OS development, consider supporting the author:
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MicaNT is an independent clean-room operating system implementation. "Windows", "DirectX", and "Direct3D" are registered trademarks of Microsoft Corporation. MicaNT, PrismX, and Prism3D are not affiliated with, endorsed by, or sponsored by Microsoft Corporation. Compatibility interfaces are implemented under nominative fair use and interoperability standards (Google LLC v. Oracle America, Inc., 2021) using publicly available specifications and MIT-licensed headers.