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It's becoming more and more common to use non Linux based hypervisors to isolate workloads where security matters. Isolating applications within a given VM is n
by surajrmal 1y ago
It's becoming more and more common to use non Linux based hypervisors to isolate workloads where security matters. Isolating applications within a given VM is not seen as important and therefore ditching Linux isn't really necessary. Applications can continue to be written against Linux APIs and we can create isolation domains separately. This is no longer just a server concept as even phones and cars are starting to employ this technique. It has high cost to RAM, but as RAM gets cheaper it's not as big of a deal.
- fc417fc802 1y agoThe obvious question is why Linux is so widely used in the first place. I don't think "APIs" is enough to explain it. One obvious answer is the incredibly broad hardware support. Any alternative selected for use as the hypervisor is going to be at a serious disadvantage in that regard.
- surajrmal 1y agoNot necessarily. You can forward a lot of hardware as is to a Linux VM if you have an iommu. It comes down to whether you need multiple VMs to share access to some hardware or not, which is not all that common based on the way the isolation domains work out. This can start to become more challenging when that hardware has shared resources such as clocks, buses, or power rails to manage, but soc makers are likely going to make hardware increasingly easier to work in this modality as customers require it.