QEMU 9.1 has been released with enhanced support for ARM & RISC-V, and improved security

QEMU, the widely-used open source machine emulator and virtualizer, has released version 9.1. This update introduces significant enhancements, including compression offload support via Intel In-Memory Analytics Accelerator (IAA) and User Space Accelerator Development Kit (UADK). It improves postcopy failure recovery and adds support for VIRTIO_F_NOTIFICATION_DATA, enabling guest drivers to send additional data with device notifications.

The release also includes new commands for Linux and Windows guests, enhanced CLI command configuration, and security fixes for the QEMU NBD server and NBD TLS encryption. ARM architecture sees expanded support for FEAT_NMI, FEAT_CSV2_3, FEAT_ETS2, FEAT_Spec_FPACC, FEAT_WFxT, and FEAT_Debugv8p8 features, as well as nested/two-stage page tables for emulated SMMUv3. The xilinx_zynq board now supports cache controller and multiple CPUs, and the B-L475E-IOT01A board supports a DM163 display.

QEMU 9.1 also supports directly booting an ELF kernel and running up to 256 vCPUs via extioi virt extension. Enhanced debug/GDB support is available across multiple architectures. For RISC-V, the update includes support for privileged architecture specification version 1.13 and various extensions like Zve32x, Zve64x, Zimop, Zcmop, Zama16b, Zabha, Zawrs, and Smcntrpmf, along with FMAF, IMA, VIS3, and VIS4 architecture features.

x86 users benefit from KVM support for running AMD SEV-SNP guests and CPU emulation for Icelake-Server-v7, SapphireRapids-v3, and SierraForest.