QEMU has significantly updated its ISC (Instruction set architectures) with many important updates.
This specific update focuses more on boosting the functionality for the next-generation emulation specifically for RISC-V, x86 and ARM64 ISAs.
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If you are new to ISAs, arm.com states: "An Instruction Set Architecture (ISA) is the language that software uses to talk to computer hardware, defining the commands a processor can understand and execute".
QEMU 10.0: What's New?
For starters, RISC-V adopters will be happy to know the added support for newer chips and more feature enablements.
In addition to that, if you are into AMD SoCs, the developers are also adding support for the Microblaze V generic board, and as it is designed to be highly modular with a configurable architecture suitable for embedded systems applications. It will be favorable for the developers to leverage the open-source RISC-V software ecosystem for easily.
Key additions include support for the RISC-V IOMMU system device, which allows for hardware-accelerated I/O operations with better security isolation. The release also introduces the svukte ISA extension and adds support for the ssstateen extension, expanding QEMU's capabilities for modern RISC-V implementations.
Enhancements in performance are evident through lower overhead for RISC-V vector unit-stride load and store operations, leading to greater efficiency in vector processing. Meanwhile, security receives an upgrade with the addition of SHA algorithm support and refined Pointer Masking functionality, now aligned with the Zjpm v1.0 standard.
The release also introduces support for the RISC-V Counter delegation ISA extension and ensures compatibility with both Smdbltrp and Ssdbltrp extensions. Additionally, the IOMMU page table cache has been enhanced with a new translation tag to boost performance.
This update adds emulation support for ARM's FEAT_AFP, FEAT_RPRES, and FEAT_XS CPU features, improving compatibility.
This update enhances s390x by enabling PCI devices to bypass IOMMU for better performance and refining CPU emulation with support for PPNO and MCV instructions.
This update for HPPA adds support for Diva GSP PCI board emulation, Astro LLMIO, and up to 256 GB RAM for 64-bit guests.
The changelog has more technical information if you are up for a longer read.
Get QEMU 10.0
Since it has already been released, you find the latest version on the official download page to get the latest version.
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I don't recommend this on systems that are meant for general/production use. If you go ahead, make sure to test things well and know what you are doing.
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