Semiconductor offerings firm NetLogic Microsystems has introduced an open-source Xen hypervisor for high-performance multi-core MIPS64 processors.
The Xen hypervisor, a thin software layer that resides between the operating system and the processor, provides an abstraction layer that allows each processor to do the tasks of multiple virtualised processors.
The new hypervisor uses the XLP and XLP II multi-core, multi-threaded processors to enable virtualisation for next-generation communications, networking and server platforms.
While the next-generation XLP II processor family is designed for up to 2.5GHz and scalability up to 640 NXCPUs in the 28nm process, the XLP processor family in 40nm operates at up to 2GHz, delivering cache-coherent scalability of up to 128 NXCPUs.
NetLogic Microsystems Marketing vice-president Chris O’Reilly said their embedded multi-core processors are designed to deliver the highest performance per core, they lend themselves particularly well to virtualisation techniques by their customer base.
"Our Xen hypervisor extends our technology leadership and helps our customers and partners create new and innovative solutions with our revolutionary XLP and XLP II processor families," said O’Reilly.
