It has been ported to many hardware platforms, including the DEC PDP-11 and VAX systems, Motorola 68k (Sun-2 and Sun-3 workstations, AT&T UNIX PC, MECB), Intel x86, PowerPC G3, MIPS, ARM architecture and AVR (atmega328p/Arduino).
Dennis Brylow at Marquette University has ported Xinu to both the PowerPC and MIPSEL (little-endian MIPS) processor architectures.
Porting Xinu to reduced instruction set computing (RISC) architectures greatly simplified its implementation, increasing its ability to be used as a tool for teaching and research.
MIPSEL was chosen as a target architecture due to the proliferation of the MIPSEL-based WRT54GL router and the cool incentive that motivates some students to become involved in projects.
The Xinu Laboratory in the University of Mississippi's Department of Computer and Information Science was formed during the summer of 2008 by Dr. Paul Ruth.
First, potential faculty adopters have clearly indicated that even with the current minimal monetary cost of installation, the hardware modifications, and time investment remain troublesome factors that scare off interested educators.
Second, overcoming inherent complications that arise due to the shared subnet that allow student projects to interfere with each other in ways that are difficult to recreate, debug, and understand.