Diosix hypervisor
Diosix is an open-source bare-metal hypervisor written in Zig for multi-core RISC-V systems
Diosix technical background
This guide provides an overview of the design philosophy and technical architecture of the Diosix hypervisor. Diosix is a bare-metal, multi-core hypervisor written in the Zig programming language, specifically for the 64-bit RISC-V computing platform.
Design philosophy
Diosix is built around three core principles that ensure it remains a lightweight and reliable system. We minimize the Trusted Computing Base (TCB) through hardware-enforced isolation, restricted communication paths, and explicit control over memory and errors in Zig. By implementing a recursive Virtual Machine (VM) management model (hierarchical governance), we eliminate the need for a complex, global hypervisor state and enable scalable guest orchestration.
Technical documentation
To learn more about the internals of the hypervisor, explore our detailed technical guides:
- Hypervisor architecture: Describes the hierarchical forking model, resource quotas, and guest VM lifecycles.
- Security model: Details the TCB, hardware isolation mechanisms, and the “least privilege” workflow.
- Interface and constants: Documents the standardized Supervisor Binary Interface (SBI) extensions, RISC-V register mappings, and Executable and Linkable Format (ELF) loading protocols.
For contributors, refer to the Diosix style guide before writing new documentation or code.