The release of the QEMU 8.0 project is presented. As an emulator, QEMU allows you to run a program built for one hardware platform on a system with a completely different architecture, for example, run an ARM application on an x86-compatible PC. In the virtualization mode in QEMU, the performance of code execution in an isolated environment is close to a hardware system due to the direct execution of instructions on the CPU and the use of the Xen hypervisor or KVM module.
The project was originally created by Fabrice Bellard to allow Linux executables built for the x86 platform to run on non-x86 architectures. Over the years of development, full emulation support has been added for 14 hardware architectures, the number of emulated hardware devices has exceeded 400. In preparation for version 8.0, more than 2800 changes have been made from 238 developers.
Key improvements added in QEMU 8.0:
- Declared obsolete and support for system emulation (launching the entire OS, including KVM and Xen hypervisors) on 32-bit x86 hosts will soon be discontinued. Support for user-mode emulation (running separate processes built for a different CPU) on 32-bit x86 hosts will continue.
- Added support for running Xen guests in an environment based on the KVM hypervisor and Linux 86+ kernels in the x5.12 architecture emulator.
- Added support for FSRM, FZRM, FSRS, and FSRC CPUID flags in x86 classic TCG code generator. Implemented support for the new CPU model Intel Sapphire Rapids (Intel 7).
- The ARM emulator has implemented support for Cortex-A55 and Cortex-R52 CPUs, added a new type of emulated machine Olimex STM32 H405, added support for FEAT_EVT (Enhanced Virtualization Traps), FEAT_FGT (Fine-Grained Traps) and AArch32 ARMv8-R processor extensions. Added support for system registers in gdbstub for the M-profile architecture (microcontroller profile).
- The implementation of the emulated machines OpenTitan, PolarFire and OpenSBI has been updated in the RISC-V architecture emulator. Added support for additional processor instruction sets (ISAs) and extensions: Smstateen, icount debugging counters, virtual mode PMU cache-related events, ACPI, Zawrs, Svadu, T-Head and Zicond extensions.
- Support for the fid (Floating-Point Identify) instruction has been added to the HPPA architecture emulator and emulation has been improved in 32-bit mode.
- The 390x architecture emulator supports asynchronous memory detachment when rebooting secure KVM guests. Improved handling of forwarded zPCI devices.
- The virtio-mem mechanism, which allows you to hot plug and unplug memory to virtual machines, implements preallocation during live migration.
- Experimental support for migration has been updated in VFIO (Virtual Function I / O) (the second edition of the migration protocol is involved).
- The qemu-nbd block device has improved performance over TCP when using TLS.
- Initial support for OpenBSD and NetBSD has been added to the guest agent.
Source: opennet.ru