QEMU 7.0 Is Coming With Intel AMX Support, Many RISC-V Improvements

[phoronix]

Phoronix: QEMU 7.0 Is Coming With Intel AMX Support, Many RISC-V Improvements

QEMU 7.0 is working its way towards release as an important component to the open-source Linux virtualization stack. QEMU 7.0 brings with it many notable new features and changes for this open-source processor emulator...

https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=QEMU-7.0-Coming

[xen0n]

Hmm, there's also the TCG support for LoongArch64 hosts (done by me!), seems that got missed in the changelog... I'll try to get this line in.

Interestingly the TCG target support (letting you emulate LoongArch on other architectures) still needs some work before it can be merged... and that support is being worked on by Loongson employees. Tells something about their current R&D capabilities...

(No, it's no longer the familiar Loongson that was rather community-friendly a decade ago; that was before the Godson research group left ICT CAS to found today's Loongson Corporation, I think. They still have the firmware (EDK II) and essential kernel bits open-sourced, though.)

[ehansin]

General QEMU and/or virtualization question. We have a lab running an older combination lab hardware and software that needs to run on macOS 10.2 and a Power G4. The older Mac runs and works but we had to replace one already. Would QEMU on Linux be something that could emulate that hardware and be capable of having macOS 10.2 install upon? We would also need to pass through USB and possibly FireWire, but otherwise nothing too fancy. Any other ideas?

[cytomax55]

All this cool stuff but I can't get guest>host and host>guest copy paste working

[dragorth]

General QEMU and/or virtualization question. We have a lab running an older combination lab hardware and software that needs to run on macOS 10.2 and a Power G4. The older Mac runs and works but we had to replace one already. Would QEMU on Linux be something that could emulate that hardware and be capable of having macOS 10.2 install upon? We would also need to pass through USB and possibly FireWire, but otherwise nothing too fancy. Any other ideas?

Qemu can run PPC Mac OS X from the Dev release up to 10.4.11 Tiger. (I think it can run Leopard, but haven't tested myself.) This uses TCG translation. I haven't tested USB or firewire passthrough. So your software probably runs, but you will have to do research on the hardware, or test it yourself.

Since this is translation, the faster the CPU you throw at this, the faster the Mac OS X will feel.

FYI, it can also run Mac OS 9 as well.

https://www.emaculation.com/doku.php/ppc-osx-on-qemu-for-windows

https://wiki.qemu.org/Documentation/Platforms/PowerPC

There are some experimental builds that you can test for your purposes.

Also, if you have one of the Power 9 or 10 computers, there is dev work to use KVM, which allows almost full speed VMs.

Here is more info on Qemu and old Mac software.

https://macintoshgarden.org/search/node/qemu

Here is some success with USB passthrough, but this is OS 9. YMMV.

https://www.emaculation.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=10438

[ehansin]

dragorth Thank you for all of this info, super helpful!!

Just to add, took a quick look and plenty here to work with. I have the two installation CDs for the MacOS I need as ISO images, so thinking should be easy enough to play around with. Thanks again.

[dragorth]

dragorth Thank you for all of this info, super helpful!!

Just to add, took a quick look and plenty here to work with. I have the two installation CDs for the MacOS I need as ISO images, so thinking should be easy enough to play around with. Thanks again.

I wish you sucess with your endeavors.

[Quackdoc]

the new dbus interfaces are the most exciting. I see this as quite possibly the first big step to viable VDI on qemu. it is insanely low latency for client on server setups (like a typical desktop), the the point on my 60hz montior and an ubuntu live boot, it feels like a native application. dbus client is noticably faster using spice-app. and does seem suitable to become the "native" implementation, but I don't have the necessary hardware to test this. (latency tester with a 240hz screen would be good for testing latency).

one of the issues with current "VDI" like solutions such as spice, is that they either rely on in VM hardware video encode, or host side software video encode. while tinkering with spice trying to get it to be suitable for hardware encode, (something I still haven't managed to do due to some issues frame size issues). the new D-bus interface should allow more custom solutions designed for low latency (like game streaming for instance) as well as to port spice to it. I haven't yet tested the VNC server yet, as I haven't quite gotten it to run sadly.

[ehansin]

I wish you sucess with your endeavors.

Well hot dang I tell you... just got the Mac OS 10.2 installer to boot on qemu-system-powerpc on Sway/Linux on VirtualBox on Windows (virtualizing on top of virtualization!) - woohoo!!

Clearly nothing fancy, but proves it boots. Might not even be the best option for the use I was thinking, but if their G4 hits the dust again, good to know may be possible. Thanks again for the pointers.

[Quackdoc]

Well hot dang I tell you... just got the Mac OS 10.2 installer to boot on qemu-system-powerpc on Sway/Linux on VirtualBox on Windows (virtualizing on top of virtualization!) - woohoo!!

Clearly nothing fancy, but proves it boots. Might not even be the best option for the use I was thinking, but if their G4 hits the dust again, good to know may be possible. Thanks again for the pointers.

I wonder if using native qemu would work better for you