The Xen Project has delivered an update to its flagship hypervisor.
In version 4.20, the Project has added eight security updates, support for LLC (Last Level Cache) coloring for performance optimizations on the Arm architecture, support for the Paging-Write Feature on Intel CPUs, and support for AMD’s Zen 5 processors.
Experimental support for Armv8-R also made it in, along with plenty of changes that make the hypervisor more stable and better able.
This release also enables the Undefined Behaviour Sanitiser by default for x86, Arm64, RISC-V and PowerPC.
Note that mention of RISC-V, as readers may recall that four years ago, the Xen Project started to talk about a port to the architecture and last year reported “accelerating development.”
Xen 4.20’s release notes state developers “continue working” on the PowerPC and RISC-V ports without offering any timeline. With more and more server-grade RISC-V designs emerging, there’s plenty of incentive for the Xen team to work fast.
You can download Xen 4.20 here, check out its feature list and even wade into its developer mailing list and GitHub repo if you want oodles of detail.
While you’re on GitHub, check this out - it’s a repository for a new open-source hypervisor called SEAPATH that launched last month.
As explained by the Linux Foundations LF Energy project, “SEAPATH is an ecosystem of open source digital substations technologies for both software and hardware to host and run vPAC (Virtualized Protection, Automation and Control) applications for the power grid industry.”
LF Energy works on open source tech to help advance the transition to renewable energy, which typically complicates grids by connecting many more power sources than were needed when big power plants were the main source of energy,
SEAPATH is designed to run on Digital Substation Automation Systems, which like any other computer can benefit from the resilience and isolation afforded by a hypervisor.
Orgs contributing to SEAPATH include Red Hat, Savoir-faire Linux, Frances’s electricity transmission operator RTE, Schneider Electric, and GE Vernova.
The SEAPATH Wiki suggests the open source KVM hypervisor is present, as is the QEMU Emulator and Libvirt: virtualization API. SEAPATH runs on Arm and x86, just like Xen 4.20.
And before we forget: the acronym SEAPATH stands for “Software Enabled Automation Platform and Artifacts (Therein).” Which is an odd one, for sure. ®