The latest release of the Qemu project, version 10.0.0, has been presented. Qemu, as an emulator, allows users to run a program designed for one hardware platform on a system with a completely different architecture. For example, it enables the execution of an ARM program on an X86-compatible PC. In virtualization mode, Qemu achieves performance close to the hardware system by directly executing instructions on the CPU and utilizing hypervisors such as XEN, KVM in Linux, or NVMM in NetBSD.
Initially created by Fabrice Bellard to enable the execution of X86 Linux executable files on non-X86 architectures, Qemu has evolved over the years to support complete emulation for 14 hardware architectures and over 400 emulated hardware devices. For version 10.0, more than 2,800 changes from 211 developers have been implemented.
Key improvements in Qemu 10.0 include:
- Improvements in the virtio-scsi driver, which provides a virtual SCSI controller for virtual machines, with support for multiqueues to allow for multi-flow access on multi-core systems.
- Enhanced support for VFIO (Virtual Function I/O) for Integrated Graphics Devices in Intel processors, alongside PCI Power Management implementation.
- Expanded documentation on QMP (Qemu Machine Protocol) for better control of Qemu by applications.
- Introduction of a new Live Migration mode called “CPR-TRANSFER” for moving guest systems to a new Qemu copy on the same host with minimal downtime.
- Addition of graphic devices ‘Apple-GFX-PCI’ and ‘Apple-GFX-MMIO’ for hardware acceleration of graphics in guest systems, designed for X86-64 and ARM64 devices.