Re: [Publicity] Xen 4.4 features for press release

[Ian Campbell <Ian.Campbell@xxxxxxxxxx>]

On Mon, 2014-01-06 at 19:07 +0000, Lars Kurth wrote:

> * GRUB 2 now supports PV xen images (external). In the past, Xen
> required a custom implementation of GRUB called pvgrub. The upstream
> GRUB 2 (see http://www.gnu.org/software/grub/) project now has a build
> target which will construct a bootable PV xen image.  This ensures
> 100% GRUB 2
> compatibility for pvgrub going forward. 

"a custom implementation of GRUB1 called pvgrub" (specifically say grub1
here)

"This ensures 100% GRUB 2 compatibility going forward" (drop pvgrub from
that sentence, since pvgrub is not affected by this grub2 work).

Perhaps extend with "... which ensures greater compatiblity with current
distros".

> * Improved ARM support for Xen. [TODO: clarify whether support has
> moved from tech preview to experimental or supported]. A number of new
> features have been implemented:
> ** 64 bit Xen on ARM now supports booting guests

"...booting 64-bit guests". It was possible to launch a 32-bit guest on
a 64-bit hypervisor in 4.3 IIRC. (perhaps that is splitting hairs and
your version is as far as it is needed to go)

> ** Physical disk partitions and LVM volumes can now be used to store
> guest images using xen-blkback (or is PV drivers better in terms of
> terminology)

I might be tempted to end the sentence before "using". However I'm not
sure this is a change in its own right and not just an affect of the
"DMA in DOM0" thing you mention later.

> ** Significant stability improvements across the board
> ** ARM/multiboot booting protocol design and implementation in Xen and
> U-boot 

I'd leave this one out, it's not turned out to be entirely concrete,
it's more like a recipe for a set of commands you can feed u-boot to
boot Xen than a thing implemented in u-boot.

Perhaps mention this in "Significant usability improvements," instead,
as in "much simplified boot procedure" or something.

> ** Same DMA in Dom0 even with no hardware IOMMUs (not sure what the
> implications of this are)

s/Same/Support/g ?

This is required to run on almost all current hardware since IOMMUs
(called SMMU in ARM world) are present in any existing widely available
hardware.

> [...]

> ** Xen on ARM now supports the Arndale board, Calxeda ECX-2000 (aka
> Midway), Applied Micro X-Gene Storm, TI OMAP5 andAllwinner A20/A30
> boards

The Allwinner boards are A20 based. There is no A30 processor, it's A31,
I've just fixed the wiki page. Most of the testing to date has been A20
based although it should work on the A31 too. A20 is by far the more
popular processor on the sorts of boards we are seeing.

>  [TODO: check with APM whether we can use this in a press release and
> whether there is more than Mustang support now]. 

AFAIK it is just mustang AKA storm at the minute.

Ian.



_______________________________________________
Publicity mailing list
Publicity@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
http://lists.xenproject.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/publicity