Version 4.21 also brings advances in the datacenter, on ARM, and RISC-V

The Xen Project today delivered a major release of its hypervisor and associated tools, including contributions from automaker Ford, which quietly joined the project in June.

Ford's interest in Xen reflects the automotive industry's acknowledgment that future vehicles will all include computers to handle many tasks, among them running safety systems, instrument panels, telematics, and infotainment systems. Automakers are also keenly aware that it is untenable for safety software to stop working if an infotainment system glitches, and so are exploring in-vehicle hypervisors to isolate different workloads. Such concerns are one reason Japan's Honda is a Xen Project member.

A few months before this new Xen release – version 4.21, to be precise – 3.5 percent of authors working on the project came from Ford, more than came from Arm. Cloud Software Group was the main source of authors, ahead of AMD, SUSE, services outfit EPAM, and ...