siemens/jailhouse

Health v2 · maintenance only

Flags: no_releases no_license

Adoption not part of the score

1952 stars · 363 forks observed · 2026-08-28

What it is AI-extracted, prompt v1, taxonomy v1, 2026-08-30, confidence not recorded

Jailhouse is a Linux-based partitioning hypervisor that splits hardware resources into isolated cells running bare-metal applications or adapted operating systems alongside Linux. It prioritizes simplicity over features, performing no scheduling or resource overcommitment, and is loaded and configured by a running Linux system.

Use cases

• run bare-metal real-time applications alongside Linux on the same hardware
• statically partition CPUs, RAM, and devices between isolated cells
• isolate safety-critical or deterministic workloads from a general-purpose Linux host
• run a second (adapted) operating system next to Linux without full virtualization
• achieve strong isolation with minimal hypervisor overhead on x86 or ARM hardware

When to choose

• you need static, non-overcommitted partitioning of hardware resources with strong isolation
• you want a minimal hypervisor with no scheduling overhead for real-time or embedded workloads
• you can boot Linux first and use it to configure and manage the hypervisor
• your hardware supports the required virtualization features (Intel VMX/EPT/VT-d or ARM virtualization extensions)

When to avoid

• you need dynamic resource overcommitment, scheduling, or general-purpose VM management (use KVM or Xen)
• you want to run unmodified guest operating systems with full device virtualization
• you need a standalone bare-metal hypervisor that boots without a Linux host
• your platform lacks the required hardware virtualization and IOMMU support

Facets

library · maturity stable

security embedded operating-systems embedded-systems developer-tools hypervisor partitioning bare-metal cells real-time static-partitioning virtualization linux x86 arm

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markdown · JSON · MCP: product_card(name="siemens/jailhouse")