The latest release of the QEMU project, version 11.1.0, has been presented. QEMU is an emulator that allows users to run programs compiled for one hardware platform on a system with a different architecture, such as running an ARM application on an x86-compatible PC. In virtualization mode, QEMU’s performance of code execution in an isolated environment closely mirrors that of the hardware system, thanks to the direct execution of instructions on the CPU and the use of hypervisors like Xen, the KVM module in Linux, or the NVMM module in NetBSD.
Originally created by Fabrice Bellard to enable running Linux executables compiled for the x86 platform on non-x86 architectures, QEMU has evolved over the years to support full emulation for 14 hardware architectures and over 400 emulated hardware devices. For the latest version, 11.1.0, over 3,200 changes were made by 285 developers.
Some key improvements in QEMU 11.1.0 include:
- The UFS controller emulator now implements features defined in the UFS 4.1 specification, such as HID mode for defragmentation and the Write Booster mechanism.
- A new virtio-device, vhost-user-rtc, enhances access to the real-time clock by using background vhost-user processes to speed up operations.
- Improvements to the graphical interface include enhanced virtual console support, a new “encoding” option for specifying character encoding, and the introduction of a separate VNC server, qemu-vnc.
- The ARM architecture emulator has added support for 30 processor extensions and a new type of emulated system, imx8mp-evk, based on the i.MX 8MM Evaluation kit.
- The HPPA architecture emulator now has better support for HP-UX 9 OS and an updated SeaBIOS-hppa firmware.
- For the PowerPC architecture emulator, the ability to use the MPIPL extension and support for emulation of auxiliary memory management units have been added.
- In the RISC-V architecture emulator, support for K230 and Tenstorrent boards has been added, along with instruction set architecture extensions for big-endian systems.