In safety-critical industries like automotive and industrial systems, trust is non-negotiable. When building software that controls critical hardware, like braking systems or factory automation, you need confidence. The software must behave exactly as intended. Every time. On the actual device.
That's why the Xen Project is investing in a new kind of continuous integration (CI). A CI that is open, transparent, and global.
This lets adopters of one of the world’s most secure and stable open-source hypervisors, Xen, have confidence in the software that controls their hardware. Xen is laying the foundation for the next generation of automotive and industrial systems. Systems that demand high core counts per watt and per square centimeter.
🚀 A CI Pipeline That Meets You Where You Are
Most open source CI pipelines run on generic cloud VMs. These are great for catching bugs and enforcing code quality. But they rarely replicate real-world hardware conditions.
That doesn’t cut it when you're working with diverse hardware architectures or building for mission-critical deployments.
It supports real bare-metal testing across a globally distributed fleet of devices.
Contributors can see, in real time, how their changes perform on:
- Arm boards
- x86 servers
- Embedded platforms
- ...and more
And this is only the beginning.
🔧 Bring Your Own Hardware
Partners can contribute their own on-site test hardware, like embedded boards, laptops, and servers, to the CI network. All by following some straightforward setup guidelines. This allows consumers and integrators to run the Xen test jobs and confirm that Xen runs correctly on their specific devices. In this way, everyone benefits form the larger Xen Project infrastructure.
With modern System-on-a-Chip (SoC) designs, development cycles require fast validation across the full software stack, hypervisor included.
🚗 Why This Matters for Automotive and Embedded Innovators
Companies like Honda, Ford, Renesas, Arm, and AMD are already on the Xen Project Advisory Board. They know that long-term success in embedded systems depends on more than just good code. It requires a transparent, reproducible, and community-driven process.
Xen’s CI delivers:
- ✅ Hardware Assurance: Real testing on real devices, not just emulated environments.
- 🌍 Customization Without Isolation: Add test devices on-site, without giving up collaboration.
- 🧾 Traceability: Every test is logged, traceable, and publicly viewable.
- 📊 Global Visibility: A live CI status page shows what’s running, where, and how it’s performing.
- ⏱️ Faster than the Lab: Say goodbye to the cost and delay of external test labs. CI results happen in minutes, not days.
🤝 A Model for Open Collaboration
This isn’t just a CI. It's a model for how open source communities and industry can work together.
By opening our infrastructure and inviting partners to participate directly in validation, we’re proving that shared tooling can meet enterprise requirements. All without compromising security or intellectual property.
We believe this approach is the future of safety-critical open source.
🧭 Join the Mission
Are you working on hardware that could benefit from secure, stable, and scalable virtualization?
We’re building something different.
Something open.
Something real.