Hyperlaunch

Hyperlaunch is a new, flexible system for launching the Xen hypervisor and virtual machines.

The design enables seamless transition for existing systems that require a dom0, and provides a new general capability to build and launch alternative configurations of virtual machines, including support for static partitioning and accelerated start of VMs during host boot, while adhering to the principles of least privilege. It incorporates the existing dom0less functionality, extended to fold in the new developments from the DomB project, with support for both x86 and Arm platform architectures, building upon and replacing the earlier 'late hardware domain' feature for disaggregation of dom0.

Hyperlaunch is designed to be flexible and reusable across multiple use cases, and our aim is to ensure that it is capable, widely exercised, comprehensively tested, and well understood by the Xen community.

• Committed version of the Hyperlaunch Design Document, merged 8th July 2021
• Committed version of the Hyperlaunch Device Tree Design Document, merged 8th July 2021
• Xen Hyperlaunch: From Zero to Assurance - Keynote at the Xen Summit 2022 video
• Hyperlaunch: A New Start for Xen - Keynote at the Xen Summit 2021 video
• XSM Roles: A New Role Model for Xen - at the Xen Summit 2021 video
• Hyperlaunch Design Session at the Xen Summit 2021 video
• Minutes of working group meeting, 18th March 2021
• Hypervisor code developed for the hyperlaunch prototype, initial development milestone

Implementation

• Version 4 patch series contains the fourth version of changes proposed to the Xen Hypervisor towards integrating Hyperlaunch. This v4 series is initial integration work rather than a full Hyperlaunch feature implementation -- see the earlier Version 1 series for a posted full implementation of the Hyperlaunch feature.
• Slides and notes from Design Session at Xen Summit 2023
• Version 1 patch series posted to xen-devel mailing list in July 2022
• RFC version of preparatory work on boot logic posted May 2022
• Version 6 of the XSM Roles patch series, posted September 2021

DomB mode of dom0less

• Xen Summit 2019: Keynote: Xen Dom0-less
• Embedded Linux Conference 2019: Static Partitioning Made Simple
• xen-devel, June 2018: RFC: Boot domain, DomB
• Dec 2019 design meeting in Cambridge
• May 2020 domB design doc v1
• Xen Summit 2020 Talk video: Xen System Boot: Launching VMs (DomB)
• Xen Summit 2020 Design Session video: Next steps for Xen system boot: launching VMs (DomB)

Related work

• TrenchBoot and Dynamic Root of Trust for Measurement (DRTM)
• OpenXT & Boot Integrity references
• Platform Security Summit 2018 videos
• Platform Security Summit 2019 videos
• System Device Tree specification, 16th March 2021

Earlier design document revisions

• Version 4 of the Hyperlaunch Design Document - posted May 2021
• Device Tree Design Document for Version 4
• Version 3 of the Hyperlaunch Design Document - posted March 2021
• Draft of Device Tree Design Document - posted March 2021
• Version 1 of the domB Design Document - posted May 2020