ChangeLog/1.0
General
- i386-softmmu is no longer named qemu but instead referred to as qemu-system-i386 for better consistency with other targets. A new tool is likely to be introduced that uses the qemu name so distributions are advised to not undo this change.
- QEMU now uses a separate thread for VCPU execution. This merges the biggest difference between the qemu-kvm tree and upstream QEMU.
- A new memory dispatch API has been added internally. A new monitor command "info mtree" can show the hierarchy of memory regions in the guest.
- QEMU now has a build dependency on glib and makes extensive use of glib.
- QEMU now can run on more hosts. Hosts without a native code generator can use the TCG interpreter (TCI). See Features/TCI for more information.
Block devices (disks)
- QEMU now supports I/O latency accounting in the monitor command "info blockstats".
- Errors are now tracked per device and are shown by the monitor command "info block".
- All image formats now support asynchronous operation. IDE and SCSI emulation will use this feature, while other devices (notably floppy and SD) will not.
IDE/ATAPI
- A large number of bugs were fixed regarding CD media change and tray locking.
SCSI
- Memory management errors could crash QEMU when scsi-disk encountered I/O errors. Many instances of this problem were fixed.
- The accuracy of error handling for SCSI emulation has been greatly improved.
- SCSI devices can now be addressed by channel, target (id) and LUN. Not all emulated HBAs will support this feature (in particular, the LSI controller will not).
- Block device pass through is now supported through a new scsi-block device. The scsi-block device works with block devices (like /dev/sda or /dev/sr0) rather than /dev/sgN devices, and is more efficient because it does not consume arbitrary amounts of memory when the guest does large data transfers.
- SCSI CD-ROMs now report media changed events.
- SCSI CD-ROMs now support DVD images.
- Bugfixes for IDE media change also apply to SCSI.
- SCSI devices now report a unit attention condition when the system is started or reset. This may cause problems with old firmware versions.
VDI
- Now supports discarded blocks in dynamically-sized images.
User-mode networking (SLIRP)
- SLIRP can process ARP replies and gratuitous ARP requests from the guest.
ARM
- QEMU now supports the new Cortex-A15 instructions in linux-user mode (via "-cpu any"): VFPv4 fused multiply-accumulate (VFMA, VFMS, VFNMA, VFNMS) and also integer division (UDIV, SDIV).
- The vexpress-a9, versatileab, versatilepb and realview-* boards now have audio support.
- QEMU is known not to work on ARM hosts in this release. (ARM target emulation is fine.)
pSeries
- sPAPR VIO devices can now be created with -device.
Xtensa
- QEMU now supports DC232b and FSF xtensa CPU cores.
- QEMU now supports sim (similar to Tensilica ISS) and LX60/LX110/LX200 machines.
Migration
- QEMU now supports live migration using image files like QCOW2 on shared storage