QEMU 10.0 released with enhanced performance, new features for ARM, RISC-V, and more
QEMU, the versatile and open source emulator and virtualization tool, has just released its major 10.0 version, bringing a host of new features and enhancements. This update includes significant performance optimizations for specific Intel Xeon processors — particularly Clearwater Forest and Sierra Forest v2 — as well as improved support for virtualization features such as multiple queues for the virtio-scsi device. It also introduces apple-gfx-pci and apple-gfx-mmio devices, enabling accelerated graphics for macOS virtual machines.
Each architecture benefits from different updates. For ARM, QEMU 10.0 supports new CPU features like FEAT_AFP, FEAT_RPRES, and FEAT_XS, Secure EL2 physical and virtual timers, several development boards (e.g., Stellaris, NPCM845 Evaluation, and i.MX 8M Plus EVK), and a new option to configure larger PCIe MMIO regions. However, RISC-V is the clear winner in terms of new additions: support for Tenstorrent Ascalon processors, 64-bit initrd addresses, new IOMMU devices, trace support for user-mode exceptions, and multiple new ISA extensions are all part of the package.
The update also brings improvements for HPPA, s390x, and LoongArch architectures. In addition, it enhances VFIO (Virtual Function I/O), a Linux subsystem allowing direct hardware access for user-space applications. Notable additions include support for multifd (multi-threaded migration), legacy ATI GPUs, initial PCI PM capabilities, IGD passthrough for Intel Gen 11 and 12 chips, and better error reporting for MMIO mapping failures.
