ACRN Hypervisor Release Version 2.3

We are pleased to announce the release of ACRN™ hypervisor version 2.3.

Enhanced GPU passthrough (GVT-d)
GPU passthrough (GVT-d) to Windows as a guest is now enabled for 11th Gen Intel® Core™ processors (codenamed Tiger Lake-UP3).
Shared memory based inter-VM communication (ivshmem) is extended
ivshmem now supports interrupts (See ACRN Shared Memory Based Inter-VM Communication).
End-to-end secure boot improvement
OVMF can be loaded now as two blobs, one for code and the other for data. The code blob can be verified by the Service VM’s dm-verity as a step in the end-to-end secure boot.
Enhanced system shutdown
The pre-launched VM may now initiate a system shutdown or reset.
Removed deprivileged boot mode support
ACRN has supported deprivileged boot mode to ease the integration of Linux distributions such as Clear Linux. Unfortunately, deprivileged boot mode limits ACRN’s scalability and is unsuitable for ACRN’s hybrid hypervisor mode. In ACRN v2.2, deprivileged boot mode was no longer the default and completely removed in ACRN v2.3. We’re focusing instead on using the simpler and more scalable multiboot2 boot (via Grub). Multiboot2 is not supported in Clear Linux so we have chosen Ubuntu (and Yocto Project) as the preferred Service VM OSs moving forward.

Improvements, updates, and corrections have been made throughout our documentation as well.

See the v2.3 full release notes and documentation for more information about this release including fixed and known issues.