By Simon Sharwood
Publication Date: 2026-08-18 01:59:00
virtualization
Boeing quietly joins FOSS hypervisor crew, as AMD and Renesas lead new effort to comply with formal standards
The Xen Project, home of the open-source hypervisor, has decided it’s time to get serious about formal safety.
That’s not an admission of security woes, but a push to ensure the hypervisor complies with formal safety standards like IEC-61508, which defines the processes and practices used in software that runs in devices and settings that could conceivably harm humans.
Xen has in recent years emphasized work to make its code more suitable to run in embedded workloads and devices like cars. The project points to the fact that modern vehicles rely on software for tasks as diverse as emergency braking and infotainment systems, and manufacturers’ preference to offer all such services with as few physical computers as possible. Virtualizing workloads in a car means a glitchy navigation app is isolated and can’t impact performance of a critical application like collision avoidance.
The Xen Project now wants to make its software an even better option in such scenarios by complying with formal safety standards. The Register understands that project members believe many more devices, such as robots, will also need workload isolation, so they want to make sure that Xen becomes hypervisor-of-choice in more scenarios.
The group has therefore created a Safety Committee. Three…
