Re: DRAFT: Xen 4.16 release blog post

[Bertrand Marquis <Bertrand.Marquis@xxxxxxx>]

Hi Roger,

Due to internal delays to make a PR, arm will not be able to provide something 
in the delay (would take at least a week).

I will keep that in mind to request that earlier for next release.

Cheers
Bertrand

> On 26 Nov 2021, at 08:38, Roger Pau Monné <roger@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
>
> On Wed, Nov 24, 2021 at 12:20:37PM +0100, Roger Pau Monné wrote:
>> Hello,
>>
>> Below is the starting draft for the Xen 4.16 release blog post.
>>
>> Note it has a bunch of XXX to be filled with new information.
>> "Community Initiative Updates" listed projects is subject to changes
>> as we gather more information.
>
> New draft, with the RISC-V and FuSa sections filled:
>
> XEN PROJECT SHIPS VERSION 4.16 WITH FOCUS ON IMPROVED PERFORMANCE SECURITY 
> AND HARDWARE SUPPORT.
>
> NEW VERSION INTRODUCES ARM VIRTUAL PERFORMANCE MONITOR COUNTERS AND BROADER 
> X86 HARDWARE SUPPORT. COMMUNITY INITIATIVES, INCLUDING FUNCTIONAL SAFETY AND 
> VIRTIO, CONTINUE TO PROGRESS.
>
> The Xen Project, an open source hypervisor hosted at the Linux Foundation, 
> today announced the release of Xen Project Hypervisor 4.16, which introduces 
> a variety of features allowing for improved performance, security, 
> functionality and hardware support. The Xen Project community continues to be 
> active and engaged, with a wide range of developers from many companies and 
> organizations contributing to this latest release. Additionally, 
> community-wide initiatives, including Functional Safety and VirtIO for Xen, 
> continue to make valuable progress.
>
> XXX: "Xen Project continues to be a mature, open source hypervisor well 
> suited for enterprise use cases that require security and high levels of 
> performance. In addition to the incredible work that went into this release, 
> I’m also pleased with the multiple community initiatives the Xen Project 
> continues to drive forward and contribute to."
> XXX: replace with something new
>
> Notable Features
>
> * Miscellaneous fixes to the TPM manager software in preparation for TPM 2.0 
> support.
>
> * Increased reliance on the PV shim as 32bit PV guests will only be supported 
> in shim mode going forward. Such change reduces the surface of attack in the 
> hypervisor.
>
> * Increased hardware support by allowing Xen to boot on Intel devices that 
> lack a Programmable Interval Timer.
>
> * Cleanup of legacy components by no longer building QEMU Traditional or 
> PV-Grub by default. Note both projects have upstream Xen support merged now, 
> so it is no longer recommended to use the Xen specific forks.
>
> * Improved support for the Gitlab automated tests: 32bit Arm builds and full 
> system tests for x86.
>
> * Initial support for guest virtualized Performance Monitor Counters on Arm.
>
> * Improved support for dom0less mode by allowing the usage on Arm 64bit 
> hardware with EFI firmware.
>
> * Improved support for Arm 64bit heterogeneous systems by leveling the CPU 
> features across all cores in order to improve big.LITTLE support.
>
> Community Initiative Updates
>
> Functional Safety Update
>
> In collaboration with the Zephyr project and the MISRA consortium, the Xen 
> FuSa
> Special Interest Group analyzed MISRA C rules in depth and defined a subset of
> rules that apply to Xen and will be tackled with the community. The SIG
> evaluated several static code analyzers to scan the Xen code base for MISRA C
> violations. The team started enhancing the Xen build system with the ability 
> to
> run open source MISRA C checkers as part of the Xen build, so that for future
> releases Xen contributors will be able to easily improve the quality of their
> patches.
>
> VirtIO drivers for Xen:
>
> XXX: to be provided
>
> RISC-V Port:
>
> RISC-V, an open standard instruction set architecture (ISA) based on
> established reduced instruction set computer (RISC) principles, is a free and
> open ISA enabling hardware designers to design simpler chips with a
> royalty-free ISA. The Xen community, led by sub-project XCP.ng, is working on 
> a
> RISC-V Port for Xen.
>
> During this release cycle significant work has been ongoing internally in 
> order
> to get dom0 booting on RISC-V hardware, focusing on introducing the
> functionality to allow interrupt management, together with other interfaces
> required for early boot code.
>
> Community Quotes
>
> XXX: to be provided
>
> * AMD
> * Citrix
> * EPAM
> * SUSE
> * Vates
> * Xilinx
>
> About the Xen Project
> Xen Project software is an open source virtualization platform licensed under 
> the GPLv2 with a similar governance structure to the Linux kernel. Designed 
> from the start for cloud computing, the Project has more than a decade of 
> development and is being used by more than 10 million users. A project at The 
> Linux Foundation, the Xen Project community is focused on advancing 
> virtualization in a number of different commercial and open source 
> applications including server virtualization, Infrastructure as a Services 
> (IaaS), desktop virtualization, security applications, embedded and hardware 
> appliances. It counts many industries and open source community leaders among 
> its members including Amazon Web Services, Arm, Bitdefender, Citrix, EPAM 
> Systems. For more information about the Xen Project software and to 
> participate, please visit XenProject.org.
>
> AMD, the AMD logo, EPYC, and combinations thereof are trademarks of Advanced 
> Micro Devices, Inc.
>
> Intel, the Intel logo and Xeon are trademarks of Intel Corporation or its 
> subsidiaries in the U.S. and/or other countries.
>
> About Linux Foundation
> Founded in 2000, the Linux Foundation is supported by more than 1,000 members 
> and is the world’s leading home for collaboration on open source software, 
> open standards, open data, and open hardware. Linux Foundation’s projects are 
> critical to the world’s infrastructure including Linux, Kubernetes, Node.js, 
> and more.  The Linux Foundation’s methodology focuses on leveraging best 
> practices and addressing the needs of contributors, users and solution 
> providers to create sustainable models for open collaboration. For more 
> information, please visit us at linuxfoundation.org.
>
> The Linux Foundation has registered trademarks and uses trademarks. For a 
> list of trademarks of The Linux Foundation, please see our trademark usage 
> page: https://www.linuxfoundation.org/trademark-usage. Linux is a registered 
> trademark of Linus Torvalds.
>
>

IMPORTANT NOTICE: The contents of this email and any attachments are 
confidential and may also be privileged. If you are not the intended recipient, 
please notify the sender immediately and do not disclose the contents to any 
other person, use it for any purpose, or store or copy the information in any 
medium. Thank you.