XenProject it is one of the most interesting open source projects for the world of virtualization. Xen is a hypervisor that allows you to implement different types of virtualization on Linux (full virtualization, paravirtualization). Now the new version 4.12 which has interesting news for all users and administrators who are basing their virtualization on Xen. One of these novelties is the reduction of the code to occupy less and be more optimized.
The other great novelty is around the fullfilment of security requirements, which has been reinforced in this new version. There are also some code changes to the x86 architecture, updates that make it even more suitable for embedded applications and the automotive industry. Some of those changes that affect security specifically influence its integration with QEMU, and also for Argo, the Virtual Machine Introspection (VMI) subsystem, etc.
Regarding the changes regarding x86 architecture, the new Xen 4.12 has renewed the support for this ISA, the result of an effort of a few years of work that have now paid off. The GRUB2 bootloader is also positively affected by the enhancements, as support is added so that users can boot from any guest PVH kernel via the GRUB menu.
I have also previously cited something about embeds or recessed and automotive. In this sense, hard work has been done to make it easier and more viable for Xen to be used in mixed critical systems. And to conclude, we cannot miss some extra functionalities that have been added in this new version, such as improvements in the IOMMU mapping code that positively affect the performance of systems based on AMD EPYC.