ACRN is a Type 1 hypervisor designed for embedded, industrial and Internet of Things systems. It runs directly on physical hardware, allowing multiple operating systems and application environments to coexist on a single computing platform.
The hypervisor is particularly suited to systems that must combine workloads with different performance, security and reliability requirements. Examples include industrial automation, robotics and embedded devices where time-sensitive applications need predictable access to computing resources.
ACRN uses a modular architecture consisting of the hypervisor, a Linux-based Service VM and an associated Device Model. The Service VM manages hardware resources and provides device-sharing services to other virtual machines.
The architecture supports dedicated resource partitioning alongside conventional virtualisation, providing flexibility when consolidating applications that would otherwise require separate physical systems.
This is free and open source software.
Key Features
- Type 1 hypervisor running directly on supported Intel hardware.
- Shared, partitioned and hybrid virtualisation configurations.
- Pre-launched virtual machines with dedicated processors, memory and I/O resources.
- Post-launched virtual machines managed through the Service VM.
- Support for Linux, Windows and selected real-time guest operating systems.
- PCI device passthrough with Intel VT-d DMA and interrupt remapping.
- Device emulation and paravirtualised I/O through the ACRN Device Model.
- Virtio-based virtual storage, networking and communication devices.
- Real-time VM capabilities including LAPIC passthrough and polling-mode I/O.
- Virtual machine lifecycle controls for starting, stopping, pausing and resuming guests.
- Configurable allocation of virtual CPUs and memory resources.
- Hardware isolation for safety-sensitive and time-critical workloads.
Website: github.com/projectacrn/acrn-hypervisor
Support:
Developer: Project ACRN
License: BSD 3-Clause ‘New’ or ‘Revised’ License
ACRN is written in C. Learn C with our recommended free books and free tutorials.
Related Software
| Hypervisors | |
|---|---|
| Proxmox | Virtualization management platform |
| Xen Hypervisor | Fastest and most secure infrastructure virtualization solution |
| KVM | Full virtualization solution for x86 hardware |
| oVirt | Virtualization solution for your entire enterprise |
| Firecracker | Create and run lightweight microVMs |
| XCP-ng | High performance enterprise level virtualization platform |
| Lguest | Little hypervisor designed for experimentation with virtualization |
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