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QEMU 8.2 open-source virtualization software has been released today as the second major update in the QEMU 8.0 series, bringing several new features and many improvements.
Highlights of QEMU 8.2 include a new virtio-sound device that allows for audio capture and playback from inside a guest machine using the configured audio backend of the host machine, and a new virtio-gpu rutabaga device that allows various abstractions of GPU and display virtualization.
This release also adds ati-vga pixman-less support, adds the ability to migrate virtio-gpu blob=true VM, adds a new zoom-to-fit display option to the GUI, adds support for the “rom” parameter to memory-backend-file, and implements a new “avail-switchover-bandwidth” migration parameter.
For RISC-V, QEMU 8.2 adds RISC-V KVM AIA support, RISC-V Virtual IRQs and IRQ filtering support, RISC-V vector cryptographic instruction set support, zmmul and smepmp isa strings, Zihintntl extension ISA string to DTS, support for zicntr/zihpm flags, as well as support for discontinuous PMU counters.
For ARM, it adds support for the new audiodev property to the integratorcp, musicpal, n800, n810, realview-eb, realview-eb-mpcore, realview-pb-a8, realview-pbx-a9, akita, borzoi, spitz, terrier, versatilepb, versatileab, vexpress-a9, vexpress-a15, xlnx-zcu102 z2 machines.
Furthermore, ARM support was updated with support for the Cortex-A710 and Neoverse N2 CPUs, SMMUv3 support was updated to advertise the SMMUv3.1-XNX feature, and new architectural features are now emulated, including FEAT_PACQARMA3, FEAT_EPAC, FEAT_Pauth2, FEAT_FPAC, FEAT_FPACCOMBINE, FEAT_TIDCP1, FEAT_MOPS, FEAT_HBC, and FEAT_HPMN0.
QEMU 8.2 also updates the Macintosh Quadra 800 (q800) emulation to boot macOS 7.1 to 8.1 systems with or without virtual memory enabled, A/UX 3.0.1, NetBSD 9.3, and Linux (via EMILE).
HPPA support received new 64-bit PA-RISC 2.0 CPU and HP C3700 machine emulation, Start 64-bit machine with “-machine C3700” and 32-bit CPU with “-machine B160L”, improved TLB performance, Block-TLB (BTLB) support for 32-bit PA-RISC CPUs, as well as new SeaBIOS-HPPA version 12 to support HP C3000 with Astro and Elroy.
For LoongArch, QEMU 8.2 implements LASX extension and PRELDX instruction, adds support for LoongArch32 CPU la132, adds support for ‘max’ CPU model, adds support for 4K page size, implements query-cpu-model-expansion, and adds the ability for users to enable or disable LSX/LASX features.
For s390x, this release enables crypto adapter passthrough (vfio-ap) for protected virtualization guests and adds support for the s390x CPU topology (books and drawers, STSI 15.1.x instruction, PTF instruction) with KVM.
Among other noteworthy changes, MIPS and PowerPC emulation was improved with support for the new audiodev property to the fuloong2e machine (for MIPS) and pegasos2 and 40p machines (for PowerPC), SPARC emulation can now convert instruction translator to use decodetree, and there’s a new Hyper-V Dynamic Memory protocol device driver.
For more details on the changes implemented in this release, check out the full changelog. Meanwhile, you can download QEMU 8.2 from the official website or install it from the stable software repositories of your favorite GNU/Linux distribution.
Last updated 4 months ago
