Xen was originally developed by the Systems Research Group at the
University of Cambridge Computer Laboratory as part of the XenoServers
project, funded by the UK-EPSRC.
XenoServers aim to provide a ``public infrastructure for global
distributed computing''. Xen plays a key part in that, allowing one to
efficiently partition a single machine to enable multiple independent
clients to run their operating systems and applications in an
environment. This environment provides protection, resource isolation
and accounting. The project web page contains further information along
with pointers to papers and technical reports:
https://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/xeno
Xen has grown into a fully-fledged project in its own right, enabling us
to investigate interesting research issues regarding the best techniques
for virtualizing resources such as the CPU, memory, disk and network.
Project contributors now include XenSource, Intel, IBM, HP, AMD, Novell,
RedHat.
Xen was first described in a paper presented at SOSP in
20031.1, and the first
public release (1.0) was made that October. Since then, Xen has
significantly matured and is now used in production scenarios on many
sites.
