QEMU is a
free and open-source
Free and open-source software (FOSS) is a term used to refer to groups of software consisting of both free software and open-source software where anyone is freely licensed to use, copy, study, and change the software in any way, and the source ...
emulator (Quick EMUlator). It emulates the machine's
processor
Processor may refer to:
Computing Hardware
* Processor (computing)
**Central processing unit (CPU), the hardware within a computer that executes a program
*** Microprocessor, a central processing unit contained on a single integrated circuit (I ...
through dynamic
binary translation
In computing, binary translation is a form of binary recompilation where sequences of instructions are translated from a ''source'' instruction set to the ''target'' instruction set. In some cases such as instruction set simulation, the target ...
and provides a set of different hardware and device models for the machine, enabling it to run a variety of
guest operating systems. It can interoperate with
Kernel-based Virtual Machine (KVM) to run virtual machines at near-native speed. QEMU can also do emulation for user-level processes, allowing applications compiled for one architecture to run on another.
Licensing
QEMU was written by
Fabrice Bellard
Fabrice Bellard (; born 1972) is a French computer programmer known for writing FFmpeg, QEMU, and the Tiny C Compiler. He developed Bellard's formula for calculating single digits of pi. In 2012, Bellard co-founded Amarisoft, a telecommunication ...
and is
free software, mainly licensed under the
GNU General Public License (GPL for short). Various parts are released under the
BSD license,
GNU Lesser General Public License (LGPL) or other GPL-compatible licenses.
Operating modes
QEMU has multiple operating modes:
;User-mode emulation: In this mode QEMU runs single
Linux or
Darwin
Darwin may refer to:
Common meanings
* Charles Darwin (1809–1882), English naturalist and writer, best known as the originator of the theory of biological evolution by natural selection
* Darwin, Northern Territory, a territorial capital city i ...
/
macOS programs that were compiled for a different
instruction set
In computer science, an instruction set architecture (ISA), also called computer architecture, is an abstract model of a computer. A device that executes instructions described by that ISA, such as a central processing unit (CPU), is called an ' ...
. System calls are
thunked for
endianness and for 32/64 bit mismatches. Fast cross-compilation and cross-debugging are the main targets for user-mode emulation.
;System emulation: In this mode QEMU emulates a full computer system, including
peripheral
A peripheral or peripheral device is an auxiliary device used to put information into and get information out of a computer. The term ''peripheral device'' refers to all hardware components that are attached to a computer and are controlled by the ...
s. It can be used to provide virtual hosting of several virtual computers on a single computer. QEMU can boot many guest
operating systems, including
Linux,
Solaris
Solaris may refer to:
Arts and entertainment Literature, television and film
* ''Solaris'' (novel), a 1961 science fiction novel by Stanisław Lem
** ''Solaris'' (1968 film), directed by Boris Nirenburg
** ''Solaris'' (1972 film), directed by ...
,
Microsoft Windows
Windows is a group of several proprietary graphical operating system families developed and marketed by Microsoft. Each family caters to a certain sector of the computing industry. For example, Windows NT for consumers, Windows Server for serv ...
,
DOS, and
BSD
The Berkeley Software Distribution or Berkeley Standard Distribution (BSD) is a discontinued operating system based on Research Unix, developed and distributed by the Computer Systems Research Group (CSRG) at the University of California, Berk ...
;
it supports emulating several instruction sets, including
x86,
MIPS, 32-bit
ARMv7,
ARMv8,
PowerPC
PowerPC (with the backronym Performance Optimization With Enhanced RISC – Performance Computing, sometimes abbreviated as PPC) is a reduced instruction set computer (RISC) instruction set architecture (ISA) created by the 1991 Apple Inc., App ...
,
SPARC,
ETRAX CRIS and
MicroBlaze.
;KVM Hosting: Here QEMU deals with the setting up and migration of
KVM images. It is still involved in the emulation of hardware, but the execution of the guest is done by KVM as requested by QEMU.
;Xen Hosting: QEMU is involved only in the emulation of hardware; the execution of the guest is done within
Xen
Xen (pronounced ) is a type-1 hypervisor, providing services that allow multiple computer operating systems to execute on the same computer hardware concurrently. It was
originally developed by the University of Cambridge Computer Laboratory an ...
and is totally hidden from QEMU.
Features
QEMU can save and restore the state of the virtual machine with all programs running. Guest operating systems do not need patching in order to run inside QEMU.
QEMU supports the emulation of various architectures, including x86,
MIPS64
MIPS (Microprocessor without Interlocked Pipelined Stages) is a family of reduced instruction set computer (RISC) instruction set architectures (ISA)Price, Charles (September 1995). ''MIPS IV Instruction Set'' (Revision 3.2), MIPS Technologies, ...
(up to Release 6),
SPARC (sun4m and sun4u),
ARM (Integrator/CP and Versatile/PB),
SuperH,
PowerPC
PowerPC (with the backronym Performance Optimization With Enhanced RISC – Performance Computing, sometimes abbreviated as PPC) is a reduced instruction set computer (RISC) instruction set architecture (ISA) created by the 1991 Apple Inc., App ...
(
PReP and
Power Macintosh),
ETRAX CRIS,
MicroBlaze, and
RISC-V.
The virtual machine can interface with many types of physical host hardware, including the user's hard disks, CD-ROM drives, network cards, audio interfaces, and USB devices. USB devices can be completely emulated, or the host's USB devices can be used, although this requires administrator privileges and does not work with some devices.
Virtual disk images can be stored in a special format (
qcow or qcow2) that only takes up as much disk space as the guest OS actually uses. This way, an emulated 120 GB disk may occupy only a few hundred megabytes on the host. The QCOW2 format also allows the creation of overlay images that record the difference from another (unmodified) base image file. This provides the possibility for reverting the emulated disk's contents to an earlier state. For example, a base image could hold a fresh install of an operating system that is known to work, and the overlay images are used. Should the guest system become unusable (through virus attack, accidental system destruction, etc.), the user can delete the overlay and use an earlier emulated disk image.
QEMU can emulate network cards (of different models) which share the host system's connectivity by doing network address translation, effectively allowing the guest to use the same network as the host. The virtual network cards can also connect to network cards of other instances of QEMU or to local
TAP interfaces. Network connectivity can also be achieved by bridging a TUN/TAP interface used by QEMU with a non-virtual Ethernet interface on the host OS using the host OS's bridging features.
QEMU integrates several services to allow the host and guest systems to communicate; for example, an integrated
SMB server and network-port redirection (to allow incoming connections to the virtual machine). It can also boot Linux kernels without a bootloader.
QEMU does not depend on the presence of graphical output methods on the host system. Instead, it can allow one to access the screen of the guest OS via an integrated
VNC
Virtual Network Computing (VNC) is a graphical desktop-sharing system that uses the Remote Frame Buffer protocol (RFB) to remotely control another computer. It transmits the keyboard and mouse input from one computer to another, relaying the g ...
server. It can also use an emulated serial line, without any screen, with applicable operating systems.
Simulating multiple CPUs running
SMP
SMP may refer to:
Organisations
* Scale Model Products, 1950s, acquired by Aluminum Model Toys
* School Mathematics Project, UK developer of mathematics textbooks
* '' Sekolah Menengah Pertama'', "junior high school" in Indonesia
* Shanghai Mun ...
is possible.
QEMU does not require administrative rights to run unless additional kernel modules for improving speed (like
KQEMU) are used or certain modes of its network connectivity model are utilized.
Tiny Code Generator
The Tiny Code Generator (TCG) aims to remove the shortcoming of relying on a particular version of
GCC or any compiler, instead incorporating the compiler (code generator) into other tasks performed by QEMU at run time. The whole translation task thus consists of two parts:
basic blocks of target code (''TBs'') being rewritten in ''TCG ops'' - a kind of machine-independent intermediate notation, and subsequently this notation being compiled for the host's architecture by TCG. Optional optimisation passes are performed between them, for a
just-in-time compiler
In computing, just-in-time (JIT) compilation (also dynamic translation or run-time compilations) is a way of executing computer code that involves compilation during execution of a program (at run time) rather than before execution. This may cons ...
(JIT) mode.
TCG requires dedicated code written to support every architecture it runs on, so that the JIT knows what to translate the ''TCG ops'' to. If no dedicated JIT code is available for the architecture, TCG falls back to a slow
interpreter mode called TCG Interpreter (TCI). It also requires updating the target code to use TCG ops instead of the old ''dyngen'' ops.
Starting with QEMU Version 0.10.0, TCG ships with the QEMU stable release. It replaces the ''dyngen'', which relied on GCC 3.x to work.
[ -- a review of how the old dyngen worked]
Accelerator
''KQEMU'' was a
Linux kernel
The Linux kernel is a free and open-source, monolithic, modular, multitasking, Unix-like operating system kernel. It was originally authored in 1991 by Linus Torvalds for his i386-based PC, and it was soon adopted as the kernel for the GNU ope ...
module
Module, modular and modularity may refer to the concept of modularity. They may also refer to:
Computing and engineering
* Modular design, the engineering discipline of designing complex devices using separately designed sub-components
* Modul ...
, also written by
Fabrice Bellard
Fabrice Bellard (; born 1972) is a French computer programmer known for writing FFmpeg, QEMU, and the Tiny C Compiler. He developed Bellard's formula for calculating single digits of pi. In 2012, Bellard co-founded Amarisoft, a telecommunication ...
, which notably sped up emulation of x86 or x86-64 guests on platforms with the same CPU architecture. This worked by running
user mode code (and optionally some kernel code) directly on the host computer's CPU, and by using processor and peripheral emulation only for
kernel-mode
In computer science, hierarchical protection domains, often called protection rings, are mechanisms to protect data and functionality from faults (by improving fault tolerance) and malicious behavior (by providing computer security).
Computer ...
and
real-mode code. KQEMU could execute code from many guest OSes even if the host CPU did not support
hardware-assisted virtualization. KQEMU was initially a
closed-source product available free of charge, but starting from version 1.3.0pre10 (February 2007),
it was
relicensed under the
GNU General Public License. QEMU versions starting with 0.12.0 () support large memory which makes them incompatible with KQEMU.
Newer releases of QEMU have completely removed support for KQEMU.
''QVM86'' was a
GNU GPLv2 licensed drop-in replacement for the then closed-source KQEMU. The developers of QVM86 ceased development in January, 2007.
Kernel-based Virtual Machine (''KVM'') has mostly taken over as the Linux-based hardware-assisted virtualization solution for use with QEMU in the wake of the lack of support for KQEMU and QVM86. QEMU can also use KVM on other architectures like
ARM and
MIPS.
Intel's Hardware Accelerated Execution Manager (''HAXM'') is an open-source alternative
to KVM for x86-based hardware-assisted virtualization on NetBSD, Linux, Windows and macOS using
Intel VT. Intel mostly solicits its use with QEMU for Android development.
Starting with version 2.9.0, the official QEMU includes support for HAXM, under the name ''hax''.
QEMU also supports the following accelerators:
* ''hvf'', Apple's based on Intel VT.
* ''whpx'', Microsoft's Windows Hypervisor Platform based on Intel VT or AMD-V.
* ''tcg'', QEMU's own
Tiny Code Generator. This is the default.
Supported disk image formats
QEMU supports the following
disk image formats:
*
macOS Universal Disk Image Format (
.dmg
) – Read-only
*
Bochs – Read-only
*
Linux cloop
The compressed loop device (cloop) is a module for the Linux kernel. It adds support for transparently decompressed, read-only block devices. It is not a compressed file system: cloop is mostly used as a convenient way to compress conventional fi ...
– Read-only
*
Parallels disk image (
.hdd
,
.hds
) – Read-only
*
QEMU copy-on-write (
.qcow2
,
.qed
,
.qcow
,
.cow
)
*
VirtualBox Virtual Disk Image (
.vdi
)
*
Virtual PC Virtual Hard Disk
VHD (Virtual Hard Disk) and its successor VHDX are file formats representing a virtual hard disk drive (HDD). They may contain what is found on a physical HDD, such as disk partitions and a file system, which in turn can contain files and f ...
(
.vhd
)
* Virtual
VFAT
*
VMware Virtual Machine Disk
VMDK (short for Virtual Machine Disk) is a file format that describes containers for virtual hard disk drives to be used in virtual machines like VMware Workstation or VirtualBox.
Initially developed by VMware for its proprietary virtual applian ...
(
.vmdk
)
*
Raw images (
.img
) that contain sector-by-sector contents of a disk
*
CD/DVD images (
.iso
) that contain sector-by-sector contents of an optical disk (e.g. booting live OSes)
QEMU Object Model
The QEMU Object Model (QOM) provides a framework for registering user creatable types and instantiating objects from those types.
QOM provides the following features:
* System for dynamically registering types
* Support for single-inheritance of types
* Multiple inheritance of stateless interfaces
Hardware-assisted emulation
The
MIPS-compatible
Loongson-3 processor adds 200 new instructions to help QEMU translate x86 instructions; those new instructions lower the overhead of executing x86/
CISC-style instructions in the MIPS pipeline. With additional improvements in QEMU by the
Chinese Academy of Sciences, Loongson-3 achieves an average of 70% the performance of executing native binaries while running x86 binaries from nine benchmarks.
, no source code has been published for this fork, so the claim cannot be verified independently.
Parallel emulation
Virtualization solutions that use QEMU are able to execute multiple virtual CPUs in parallel. For user-mode emulation QEMU maps emulated threads to host threads. For full system emulation, QEMU is capable of running a host thread for each emulated virtual CPU (vCPU). This is dependent on the guest having been updated to support parallel system emulation, currently ARM, Alpha, HP-PA, PowerPC, RISC-V, s390x, x86 and Xtensa. Otherwise a single thread is used to emulate all virtual CPUS (vCPUS) which executes each vCPU in a round-robin manner.
Integration
VirtualBox
VirtualBox, first released in January 2007, used some of QEMU's virtual hardware devices, and had a built-in
dynamic recompiler
In computer science, dynamic recompilation is a feature of some emulators and virtual machines, where the system may recompile some part of a program during execution. By compiling during execution, the system can tailor the generated code to ...
based on QEMU. As with KQEMU, VirtualBox runs nearly all guest code natively on the host via the VMM (Virtual Machine Manager) and uses the recompiler only as a fallback mechanism - for example, when guest code executes in
real mode
Real mode, also called real address mode, is an operating mode of all x86-compatible CPUs. The mode gets its name from the fact that addresses in real mode always correspond to real locations in memory. Real mode is characterized by a 20-bit seg ...
.
In addition, VirtualBox did a lot of code analysis and patching using a built-in disassembler in order to minimize recompilation. VirtualBox is free and open-source (available under
GPL), except for certain features.
Xen-HVM
Xen
Xen (pronounced ) is a type-1 hypervisor, providing services that allow multiple computer operating systems to execute on the same computer hardware concurrently. It was
originally developed by the University of Cambridge Computer Laboratory an ...
, a virtual machine monitor, can run in HVM (hardware virtual machine) mode, using
Intel VT-x or
AMD-V
x86 virtualization is the use of hardware-assisted virtualization capabilities on an x86/x86-64 CPU.
In the late 1990s x86 virtualization was achieved by complex software techniques, necessary to compensate for the processor's lack of hardware-as ...
hardware
x86 virtualization extensions and
ARM Cortex-A7
The ARM Cortex-A7 MPCore is a 32-bit microprocessor core licensed by ARM Holdings implementing the ARMv7-A architecture announced in 2011.
Overview
It has two target applications; firstly as a smaller, simpler, and more power-efficient succes ...
and
Cortex-A15 virtualization extension.
This means that instead of paravirtualized devices, a real set of virtual hardware is exposed to the domU to use real device drivers to talk to.
QEMU includes several components: CPU emulators, emulated devices, generic devices, machine descriptions, user interface, and a debugger. The emulated devices and generic devices in QEMU make up its device models for I/O virtualization.
They comprise a PIIX3 IDE (with some rudimentary PIIX4 capabilities), Cirrus Logic or plain VGA emulated video, RTL8139 or E1000 network emulation, and ACPI support.
[Demystifying Xen HVM](_blank)
APIC support is provided by Xen.
Xen-HVM has device emulation based on the QEMU project to provide I/O virtualization to the VMs. Hardware is emulated via a QEMU "device model" daemon running as a backend in dom0. Unlike other QEMU running modes (dynamic translation or KVM), virtual CPUs are completely managed to the hypervisor, which takes care of stopping them while QEMU is emulating memory-mapped I/O accesses.
KVM
KVM (Kernel-based Virtual Machine) is a FreeBSD and Linux kernel module that allows a
user space program access to the
hardware virtualization features of various processors, with which QEMU is able to offer virtualization for x86, PowerPC, and S/390 guests. When the target architecture is the same as the host architecture, QEMU can make use of KVM particular features, such as acceleration.
Win4Lin Pro Desktop
In early 2005,
Win4Lin
Win4Lin is a discontinued proprietary software application for Linux which allowed users to run a copy of Windows 9x, Windows 2000 or Windows XP applications on their Linux desktop. Win4Lin was based on Merge software, a product which changed owne ...
introduced Win4Lin Pro Desktop, based on a 'tuned' version of QEMU and KQEMU and it hosts NT-versions of Windows. In June 2006,
[win4lin VDS announcement](_blank)
Win4Lin released Win4Lin Virtual Desktop Server based on the same code base. Win4Lin Virtual Desktop Server serves Microsoft Windows sessions to thin clients from a Linux server.
In September 2006, Win4Lin announced a change of the company name t
Virtual Bridgeswith the release of Win4BSD Pro Desktop, a port of the product to FreeBSD and PC-BSD. Solaris support followed in May 2007 with the release of Win4Solaris Pro Desktop and Win4Solaris Virtual Desktop Server.
[Win4Solaris announcement](_blank)
SerialICE
SerialICE is a QEMU-based firmware debugging tool running system firmware inside of QEMU while accessing real hardware through a serial connection to a host system. This can be used as a cheap replacement for hardware
in-circuit emulators (ICE).
WinUAE
WinUAE
UAE is a computer emulator which emulates the hardware of Commodore International's Amiga range of computers. Released under the GNU General Public License, UAE is free software.
History
Bernd Schmidt conceived of an emulator that can run Ami ...
introduced support for the
CyberStorm PPC and Blizzard 603e boards using the QEMU PPC core in version 3.0.0.
Unicorn
Unicorn is a CPU emulation framework based on QEMU's "TCG" CPU emulator. Unlike QEMU, Unicorn focuses on the CPU ''only'': no emulation of any peripherals is provided and raw binary code (outside of the context of an executable file or a system image) can be run directly. Unicorn is thread-safe and has multiple bindings and instrumentation interfaces.
Emulated hardware platforms
x86
Can emulate i386 and x86_64 architecture. Besides the
CPU
A central processing unit (CPU), also called a central processor, main processor or just processor, is the electronic circuitry that executes instructions comprising a computer program. The CPU performs basic arithmetic, logic, controlling, and ...
(which is also configurable and can emulate a number of Intel CPU models including (as of 3 March 2018)
Sandy Bridge,
Ivy Bridge,
Haswell,
Broadwell and
Skylake Skylake or Sky Lake may refer to:
* Skylake (microarchitecture), the codename for a processor microarchitecture developed by Intel as the successor to Broadwell
* Skylake (Mysia), a town of ancient Mysia, now in Turkey
* Sky Lake, Florida
Sky La ...
), the following devices are emulated:
*
CD/
DVD-ROM drive using an
ISO image
*
Floppy disk
A floppy disk or floppy diskette (casually referred to as a floppy, or a diskette) is an obsolescent type of disk storage composed of a thin and flexible disk of a magnetic storage medium in a square or nearly square plastic enclosure lined w ...
drive
*
ATA controller or
Serial ATA
SATA (Serial AT Attachment) is a computer bus interface that connects host bus adapters to mass storage devices such as hard disk drives, optical drives, and solid-state drives. Serial ATA succeeded the earlier Parallel ATA (PATA) standard t ...
AHCI controller
*
Graphics card
A graphics card (also called a video card, display card, graphics adapter, VGA card/VGA, video adapter, display adapter, or mistakenly GPU) is an expansion card which generates a feed of output images to a display device, such as a computer moni ...
: ''Cirrus CLGD 5446 PCI VGA''-card, Standard-VGA graphics card with Bochs-
VBE
VESA BIOS Extensions (VBE) is a VESA standard, currently at version 3, that defines the interface that can be used by software to access compliant video boards at high resolutions and bit depths. This is opposed to the "traditional" INT 10H, in ...
, Red Hat QXL VGA
*
Network card:
Realtek 8139C+ PCI,
NE2000 PCI, NE2000 ISA,
PCnet, E1000 (PCI Intel Gigabit Ethernet) and E1000E (PCIe Intel Gigabit Ethernet)
[https://qemu.weilnetz.de/doc/qemu-doc.html#pcsys_005fnetwork "i82551, i82557b, i82559er, ne2k_pci, ne2k_isa, pcnet, rtl8139, e1000, smc91c111, lance and mcf_fec"][http://pclosmag.com/html/issues/201208/page11.html Networking on QEMU: Setting Up The E1000 & Novell NE2000 ISA Evaluation]
*
NVMe disk interface
*
Serial port
*
Parallel port
In computing, a parallel port is a type of interface found on early computers (personal and otherwise) for connecting peripherals. The name refers to the way the data is sent; parallel ports send multiple bits of data at once ( parallel ...
*
PC speaker
* i440FX/PIIX3 or Q35/ICH9 chipsets
*
PS/2
The Personal System/2 or PS/2 is IBM's second generation of personal computers. Released in 1987, it officially replaced the IBM PC, XT, AT, and PC Convertible in IBM's lineup. Many of the PS/2's innovations, such as the 16550 UART (serial po ...
mouse
A mouse ( : mice) is a small rodent. Characteristically, mice are known to have a pointed snout, small rounded ears, a body-length scaly tail, and a high breeding rate. The best known mouse species is the common house mouse (''Mus musculus' ...
and
keyboard
Keyboard may refer to:
Text input
* Keyboard, part of a typewriter
* Computer keyboard
** Keyboard layout, the software control of computer keyboards and their mapping
** Keyboard technology, computer keyboard hardware and firmware
Music
* Musi ...
*
SCSI controller: LSI MegaRAID SAS 1078, LSI53C895A, NCR53C9x as found in the AMD PCscsi and Tekram DC-390 controllers
*
Sound card:
Sound Blaster 16,
AudioPCI ES1370 (
AC97),
Gravis Ultrasound, and
Intel HD Audio
*
Watchdog timer (Intel 6300 ESB PCI, or iB700 ISA)
*
USB 1.x/2.x/3.x controllers (
UHCI
A host controller interface (HCI) is a register-level interface that enables a host controller for USB or IEEE 1394 hardware to communicate with a host controller driver in software. The driver software is typically provided with an operating ...
,
EHCI
A host controller interface (HCI) is a register-level interface that enables a host controller for USB or IEEE 1394 hardware to communicate with a host controller driver in software. The driver software is typically provided with an operating syste ...
,
xHCI
eXtensible Host Controller Interface (xHCI) is a computer interface specification that defines a register-level description of a host controller for Universal Serial Bus (USB), which is capable of interfacing with USB 1.x, 2.0, and 3.x compatible ...
)
* USB devices: Audio, Bluetooth dongle,
HID (keyboard/mouse/tablet),
MTP, serial interface,
CAC
CAC may refer to:
Arts
* California Arts Council, an agency for advancing California through the arts and creativity
* Campbelltown Arts Centre, multidisciplinary contemporary arts centre south-west of Sydney, Australia
* Comics Arts Conference ...
smartcard reader, storage (
bulk-only transfer and
USB Attached SCSI
USB Attached SCSI (UAS) or USB Attached SCSI Protocol (UASP) is a computer protocol used to move data to and from USB storage devices such as hard drives (HDDs), solid-state drives (SSDs), and thumb drives. UAS depends on the USB protocol, and u ...
), Wacom tablet
* Paravirtualized
VirtIO devices: block device, network card, SCSI controller, video device, serial interface,
balloon driver In computing, memory ballooning is a technique used to eliminate the need to overprovision host memory used by a virtual machine (VM). To implement it, the virtual machine's kernel implements a "balloon driver" which allocates unused memory within ...
,
9pfs filesystem driver
* Paravirtualized Xen devices: block device, network card, console, framebuffer and input device
The
BIOS
In computing, BIOS (, ; Basic Input/Output System, also known as the System BIOS, ROM BIOS, BIOS ROM or PC BIOS) is firmware used to provide runtime services for operating systems and programs and to perform hardware initialization during the ...
implementation used by QEMU starting from version 0.12 is
SeaBIOS. The VGA BIOS implementation comes from Plex86/
Bochs. The
UEFI firmware for QEMU is OVMF.
PowerPC
PowerMac
QEMU emulates the following
PowerMac peripherals:
* UniNorth PCI bridge
* PCI-VGA-compatible graphics card which maps the ''VESA Bochs Extensions''
* Two PMAC-IDE-Interfaces with hard disk and CD-ROM support.
*
NE2000 PCI adapter
* Non-volatile RAM
* VIA-CUDA with
ADB keyboard and mouse.
OpenBIOS is used as the firmware.
PREP
QEMU emulates the following
PREP peripherals:
* PCI bridge
* PCI VGA-compatible graphics card with ''VESA Bochs Extensions''
* Two IDE interfaces with hard disk and CD-ROM support
* Floppy disk drive
*
NE2000 network adapter
* Serial interface
* PREP non-volatile RAM
* PC-compatible keyboard and mouse
On the PREP target, ''Open Hack'Ware'', an
Open-Firmware-compatible BIOS, is used.
IBM System p
QEMU can emulate the paravirtual sPAPR interface with the following peripherals:
* PCI bridge, for access to virtio devices, VGA-compatible graphics, USB, etc.
* Virtual I/O network adapter, SCSI controller, and serial interface
* sPAPR non-volatile RAM
On the sPAPR target, another Open-Firmware-compatible BIOS is used, called SLOF.
ARM
ARM32
QEMU emulates the
ARMv7 instruction set
In computer science, an instruction set architecture (ISA), also called computer architecture, is an abstract model of a computer. A device that executes instructions described by that ISA, such as a central processing unit (CPU), is called an ' ...
(and down to ARMv5TEJ) with NEON extension.
It emulates full systems like Integrator/CP board, Versatile baseboard, RealView Emulation baseboard, XScale-based PDAs, Palm Tungsten, E PDA,
Nokia N800 and
Nokia N810 Internet tablets etc. QEMU also powers the Android emulator which is part of the
Android SDK
The Android SDK is a software development kit that includes a comprehensive set of development tools. These include a debugger, libraries, a handset emulator based on QEMU, documentation, sample code, and tutorials. Currently supported development ...
(most current Android implementations are ARM-based). Starting from version 2.0.0 of their Bada SDK, Samsung has chosen QEMU to help development on emulated 'Wave' devices.
In 1.5.0 and 1.6.0 Samsung
Exynos 4210 (dual-core Cortex a9) and Versatile Express
ARM Cortex-A9
The ARM Cortex-A9 MPCore is a 32-bit multi-core processor that provides up to 4 cache-coherent cores, each implementing the ARM v7 architecture instruction set. It was introduced in 2007.
Features
Key features of the Cortex-A9 core are:
* ...
ARM Cortex-A15
The ARM Cortex-A15 MPCore is a 32-bit processor core licensed by ARM Holdings implementing the ARMv7-A architecture. It is a multicore processor with out-of-order superscalar pipeline running at up to 2.5 GHz.
Overview
ARM has claimed ...
are emulated. In 1.6.0, the 32-bit instructions of the ARMv8 (AARCH64) architecture are emulated, but 64-bit instructions are unsupported.
The Xilinx Cortex A9-based Zynq SoC is modeled, with the following elements:
* Zynq-7000 ARM Cortex-A9 CPU
* Zynq-7000 ARM Cortex-A9 MPCore
* Triple Timer Counter
* DDR Memory Controller
* DMA Controller (PL330)
* Static Memory Controller (NAND/NOR Flash)
* SD/SDIO Peripheral Controller (SDHCI)
* Zynq Gigabit Ethernet Controller
* USB Controller (EHCI - Host support only)
* Zynq UART Controller
* SPI and QSPI Controllers
* I2C Controller
ARM64
SPARC
QEMU has support for both 32- and 64-bit
SPARC architectures.
When the firmware in the
JavaStation
The JavaStation was a Network Computer (NC) developed by Sun Microsystems between 1996 and 2000, intended to run only Java applications.
The hardware is based on the design of the Sun SPARCstation series, a very successful line of UNIX workstatio ...
(sun4m-Architecture) became version 0.8.1 ''Proll'',
[ 090427 people.redhat.com] a
PROM replacement used in version 0.8.2, was replaced with
OpenBIOS.
SPARC32
QEMU emulates the following ''
sun4m/sun4c/sun4d'' peripherals:
* IOMMU or IO-UNITs
* TCX Frame buffer (graphics card)
*
Lance (Am7990) Ethernet
* Non-volatile RAM
M48T02/M48T08
* Slave I/O: timers, interrupt controllers,
Zilog
Zilog, Inc. is an American manufacturer of microprocessors and 8-bit and 16-bit microcontrollers. It is also a supplier of application-specific embedded system-on-chip (SoC) products.
Its most famous product is the Z80 series of 8-bit microp ...
serial ports, keyboard and power/reset logic
* ESP SCSI controller with hard disk and CD-ROM support
* Floppy drive (not on SS-600MP)
* CS4231 sound device (only on SS-5, not working yet)
SPARC64
Emulating
Sun4u (UltraSPARC PC-like machine),
Sun4v (T1 PC-like machine), or generic
Niagara
Niagara may refer to:
Geography Niagara Falls and nearby places In both the United States and Canada
*Niagara Falls, the famous waterfalls in the Niagara River
*Niagara River, part of the U.S.–Canada border
*Niagara Escarpment, the cliff ov ...
(T1) machine with the following peripherals:
*
UltraSparc IIi
The UltraSPARC III, code-named "Cheetah", is a microprocessor that implements the SPARC, SPARC V9 instruction set architecture (ISA) developed by Sun Microsystems and fabricated by Texas Instruments. It was introduced in 2001 and operates at 600 ...
APB PCI Bridge
* PCI VGA-compatible card with VESA Bochs Extensions
* PS/2 mouse and keyboard
* Non-volatile RAM M48T59
* PC-compatible serial ports
* 2 PCI IDE interfaces with hard disk and CD-ROM support
* Floppy disk
MicroBlaze
Supported peripherals:
*
MicroBlaze with/without MMU, including
* AXI Timer and Interrupt controller peripherals
* AXI External Memory Controller
* AXI DMA Controller
* Xilinx AXI Ethernet
* AXI Ethernet Lite
* AXI UART 16650 and UARTLite
* AXI SPI Controller
LatticeMico32
Supported peripherals:
From the
Milkymist
M-Labs (formerly known as the Milkymist project) is a company and community who develop, manufacture and sell advanced open hardware devices and software. It is known for the Milkymist system-on-chip (SoC) which is a commercialized system-on-chip ...
SoC
* UART
* VGA
* Memory card
* Ethernet
* pfu
* timer
CRIS
OpenRISC
Others
External trees exist, supporting the following targets:
*
Zilog Z80[ 090506 homepage.ntlworld.com] emulating a
Sinclair 48K ZX Spectrum
* HP
PA-RISC[ 090506 nongnu.org]
*
RISC-V
See also
*
qcow
qcow is a file format for disk image files used by QEMU, a hosted virtual machine monitor. It stands for "QEMU Copy On Write" and uses a disk storage optimization strategy that delays allocation of storage until it is actually needed. Files in ...
*
Comparison of platform virtualization software
*
Mtools
*
OVPsim
*
Q
*
SIMH
*
SPIM
SPIM is a MIPS processor simulator, designed to run assembly language code for this architecture. The program simulates R2000 and R3000 processors, and was written by James R. Larus while a professor at the University of Wisconsin–Madison. ...
*
GXemul
*
GNOME Boxes
References
External links
*
Systems emulation with QEMUan IBM developerWorks article by M. Tim Jones
QVM86 project pageDebian on an emulated ARM machineFedora ARM port emulation with QEMUThe Wikibook "QEMU and KVM"(in German, or computer translated to English)
QEMU on WindowsQEMU Binaries for WindowsMicroblaze emulation with QEMUQEMU speed comparisonUnifiedSessionsManager - An unofficial QEMU/KVM configuration file definitionCouverture, a code coverage project based on QEMU* https://github.com/qemu/qemu
{{DEFAULTSORT:Qemu
Android emulation software
Cross-platform free software
Free emulation software
Free virtualization software
Linux emulation software
MacOS emulation software
PowerPC emulators
Software that uses Meson
Windows emulation software
X86 emulators