Features
This page tells you about all the features Qemu has and will get and/or lose in the foreseeable future.
Primary and Secondary
A primary feature is a feature that is actively maintained. Breaking it by introducing new code is a no-go.
Secondary features are there and work, but either there's no active maintainer caring enough about it or people don't deem the feature important enough to declare breakages here a blocking issue.
Feature List
| Feature | Importance | Maintainer | Phase-Out | Comment |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Guest CPU support | ||||
| Alpha Guest | Secondary | ? | - | - |
| ARM Guest | Primary | Paul Brook Peter Maydell |
- | - |
| CRIS Guest | Secondary | Edgar E. Iglesias | - | - |
| x86 Guest | Primary | ? | - | - |
| x86-64 Guest | Primary | ? | - | - |
| LM32 Guest | Secondary | Michael Walle | - | - |
| m68k Guest | Secondary | Paul Brook | - | - |
| MicroBlaze Guest | Secondary | Edgar E. Iglesias | - | - |
| MIPS Guest | Secondary | Aurelien Jarno | - | - |
| PPC Guest | Primary | Alexander Graf | - | - |
| S390x Guest | Secondary | Alexander Graf | - | KVM only |
| SH4 Guest | Secondary | Aurelien Jarno | - | - |
| Sparc Guest | Secondary | Blue Swirl | - | - |
| Xtensa Guest | Secondary | Max Filippov | - | - |
| Host CPU support | ||||
| Alpha Host | Secondary | Richard Henderson | - | - |
| ARM Host | Secondary | Paul Brook Peter Maydell |
- | - |
| HPPA Host | Secondary | Richard Henderson | - | - |
| x86 Host | Primary | ? | - | - |
| x86_64 Host | Primary | ? | - | - |
| IA64 Host | Secondary | Aurelien Jarno | - | - |
| PPC(64) Host | Secondary | malc | - | - |
| S390x Host | Secondary | Richard Henderson | - | - |
| Sparc Host | Secondary | Blue Swirl | - | - |
| Block layer | ||||
| Generic block layer | Primary | Kevin Wolf | - | - |
| qemu-img Tool | Primary | Kevin Wolf | - | - |
| qemu-nbd Tool | Secondary | Kevin Wolf | - | - |
| qemu-io Tool | Secondary | Kevin Wolf | - | - |
| bochs Format | Secondary | Kevin Wolf | - | - |
| cloop Format | Secondary | Kevin Wolf | - | - |
| .cow Format | Secondary | Kevin Wolf | - | - |
| curl (http/ftp) Protocol | Secondary | Kevin Wolf | - | - |
| .dmg Format | Secondary | Kevin Wolf | - | - |
| nbd Protocol | Secondary | Kevin Wolf | - | - |
| parallels Format | Secondary | Kevin Wolf | - | - |
| qcow Format | Secondary | Kevin Wolf | - | - |
| qcow2 Format | Primary | Kevin Wolf | - | - |
| raw Format | Primary | Kevin Wolf | - | - |
| sheepdog Format | Secondary | MORITA Kazutaka | - | - |
| .vdi Format | Secondary | Kevin Wolf | - | - |
| .vmdk Format | Secondary | Kevin Wolf | - | - |
| vpc Format | Secondary | Kevin Wolf | - | - |
| vvfat Protocol | Secondary | Kevin Wolf | - | - |
| User Interfaces | ||||
| Human Monitor | Primary | ? | - | - |
| QMP | Primary | Luiz Capitulino | - | - |
| VNC Output | Primary | Anthony Liguori | - | - |
| Threaded VNC Output | Primary | Corentin Chary | - | - |
| SPICE Output | Primary | Gerd Hoffmann | - | - |
| SDL Output | Primary | ? | - | - |
| curses Output | Secondary | ? | - | - |
| cocoa Output | Secondary | Andreas Färber | - | - |
| Host Platform | ||||
| Linux | Primary | ? | - | - |
| *BSD | Secondary | Blue Swirl | - | - |
| Win32 | Secondary | ? | - | - |
| Mac OS X | Secondary | Andreas Färber | - | - |
| AIX | Secondary | malc | - | - |
| KVM Support | ||||
| x86 KVM | Primary | Avi Kivity | - | - |
| x86_64 KVM | Primary | Avi Kivity | - | - |
| PowerPC BookE KVM | Primary | Alexander Graf | - | - |
| PowerPC Book3S KVM | Primary | Alexander Graf | - | - |
| S390x KVM | Primary | Alexander Graf | - | - |