Hypervisors are used widely in enterprise servers, and the number of offerings in the embedded space continues to ramp up. Hypervisors are used for virtualization and provide some level of isolation, but they're not the only option. Microkernels originated the embedded world, and a separation microkernel is specially designed for isolation and security. The same virtual-machine technology used in hypervisors can be added to a microkernel to provide a virtualization solution when needed. Both solutions provide the ability to run multiple operating systems (OSes) in a virtualized environment, including mixing OS types. Over time, the two technologies have grown closer together, but some significant differences still exist in terms of latency, determinism, and security.
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