Virtualization News Archives

Earlier this month as part of patches for cleaning up x86 32-bit kernel code for x86_64 systems, there was a patch to drop support for 32-bit x86 KVM host support. That patch has now been split off into its own patch series with also now raising the prospects of ending 32-bit KVM host support across all CPU architectures rather than being just an x86-only change.

QEMU 9.2 is out today for this processor emulator that plays an important role within the open-source Linux virtualization stack.

The Rust Hypervisor Firmware is a project out of the Cloud Hypervisor umbrella for developing open-source, Rust-based firmware that can be launched from any environment able to load ELF binaries and run them via the PVH booting standard. Rust Hypervisor Firmware v0.5 is out this weekend with the newest capabilities.

The KVM changes were merged yesterday for Linux 6.13 in further enhancing the open-source virtualization stack.

Earlier this week was the main power management updates for Linux 6.13 that included switching AMD EPYC Turin to using the amd_pstate driver on supported systems. Sent out this weekend was another set of power management updates that also includes a notable addition: the virtual CPUFreq driver.

IBM isn't formally releasing Power11 processors until next year, but their software engineers continue being quite busy preparing the Linux kernel and other open-source software for Power11. The newest on the kernel side is enabling support for KVM nested guests on IBM Power11 platforms.

DXVK 2.5 was just released as the newest version of this open-source project implementing Direct3D APIs atop the Vulkan API for better handling of Windows games on Linux systems as used by Valve's Steam Play (Proton) software.

This isn't an off-schedule April Fools' Joke or anything like that but an exciting sign of the times: VMware Workstation will be shifting off its proprietary base and onto leveraging the upstream Linux Kernel-based Virtual Machine (KVM) for virtualization needs moving forward.

Support for making use of Vulkan with VirtIO-GPU while using QEMU could very soon be upstream.

Cloud Hypervisor 42.0 is out as the newest update of this open-source, Rust-based hypervisor that began as an Intel software project but is now developed by a number of different organizations from Arm to Microsoft.

Qualcomm engineers have developed VCL as a new open-source OpenCL driver for use with VirtIO-GPU for providing OpenCL hardware acceleration within virtual machines.

The KVM x86/x86_64 changes were merged today as we are nearly done with the Linux 6.12 merge window.

The VirtIO Vsock guest/host communication interface using virtual sockets will see better performance with the in-development Linux 6.12 kernel.

Red Hat engineer Paolo Bonzini submitted the initial batch of KVM changes targeting the Linux 6.12 kernel. This is just the first batch and notably lacking all of the KVM x86 Intel/AMD changes for the cycle. But in the non-x86 space there is a fair amount of activity for this next kernel version for those making use of KVM as part of the open-source virtualization stack.

The LoongArch changes for the Kernel-based Virtual Machine (KVM) have been submitted ahead of the Linux 6.12 merge window opening. For enhancing KVM virtualization on these Chinese CPUs is enabling Loongson Binary Translation (LBT) for accelerating ARM/x86 binary translation.

Oracle today released version 7.1 of their VirtualBox virtualization software with an improved GUI, Wayland clipboard sharing support, OCI integration improvements, and other enhancements.

QEMU 9.1 is out in stable form today as the newest feature release to this open-source processor emulator that plays a vital role within the free software Linux virtualization stack.

The Bochs Direct Rendering Manager (DRM) kernel driver is in the process of being modernized. The Bochs driver is important in that it's commonly used for virtual VGA output with QEMU for Linux virtualization.

Released last month was the VirtualBox 7.1 Beta 1 virtualization software release from Oracle. This new version is bringing a modernized GUI, Wayland clipboard sharing, and other improvements. Released yesterday was the second beta of this big VirtualBox update.

The Cloud Hypervisor open-source project that serves as a Rust-written VMM focused on security and started by Intel but now backed by a multitude of vendors is out with its newest feature release. Cloud Hypervisor 41 is the new feature release worked on by engineers at Intel, Google, Microsoft, Rivos, Tencent, Ant Group, and others for this cloud and security minded virtual machine monitor.

The Xen Project has announced version Xen 4.19 of this open-source hypervisor that is rolling out security improvements, performance and scalability enhancements, and other refinements to this cross-architecture option for open-source virtualization.

Oracle today released the first public beta of their VirtualBox 7.1 virtualization software.

When it comes to virtualization with the Linux 6.11 kernel, in addition to the latest AMD SEV-SNP code making it upstream, for those making use of VMware virtualization products their initial "VMware Hypercall" API has been merged.

The Kernel-based Virtual Machine (KVM) updates for Linux 6.11 have been merged and it's a very exciting one for AMD EPYC servers with SEV-SNP guest VM support finally being in the mainline kernel.

Canonical today released LXD 6.1 as the newest version of this Ubuntu-focused solution for managing virtual machines (VMs) and containers.

Cloud Hypervisor 40.0 is out today for this open-source Rust-written VMM that started off as an Intel software project and evolved into a multi-vendor initiative with backing from the likes of Microsoft, Arm, AMD, and others for a cloud-focused, security-critical virtualization hypervisor.

For months Broadcom has been working on the VMware Hypercall API for the Linux kernel. This "vmware_hyperscall" is a new family of functions for use by the VMware guest code and virtual device drivers in an architecture-independent manner.

All of the VirtIO updates are now ready for the Linux 6.10 merge window that is closing this weekend.

The KVM changes for the Linux 6.10 kernel were merged a few days ago for this important piece to the open-source Linux virtualization stack.

Mesa's Venus Vulkan driver has made cross-device functionality optional in order to enable QEMU support for this open-source driver for virtualized environments.

Cloud Hypervisor 39 was released on Saturday for this cloud-focused, Rust-based VMM started by Intel and now a multi-vendor Linux Foundation project.

QEMU 9.0 is out tonight as the latest feature release for this prominent component to the open-source Linux virtualization stack.

For confidential computing "CoCo" virtual machines where the VM host is assumed to be un-trusted and aims to be as isolated as possible, RdRand hardware random number generator instructions are one of the limited sources of entropy for guest VMs. Right now RdRand can fail and the CoCo guest VMs will continue to boot albeit with limited or no entropy to see the VM's random number generation. But being merged today as part of x86 fixes for Linux 6.9 is now requiring seeding RNG with RdRand for CoCo environments otherwise a kernel panic.

Patches posted today by an Intel engineer allow for importing scanout buffers from other devices with the VirtIO DRM driver that is used in the virtualization space. The importing of scanout buffers from other devices/drivers can allow for more efficient use by avoiding excess copies.

The Kernel-based Virtual Machine changes for Linux 6.9 continue to enhance the capabilities of the open-source Linux virtualization software stack.

Ahead of next month's Ubuntu 24.04 LTS release, Canonical has released LXD 5.21 as the newest feature update to this container and VM manager. LXD 5.21 now ships with a production-grade graphical user interface by default, brings AMD SEV support for memory encryption of VMs on EPYC CPUs, object storage support, and other features.

Announced one month ago by Cyberus Technology was an open-source KVM back-end for VirtualBox. This work by Cyberus allows for using the KVM hypervisor with VirtualBox as opposed to its custom kernel module maintained by Oracle. That KVM back-end has now been extended to support SR-IOV graphics virtualization.

Ant Group and Alibaba have proposed PVM, the Pagetable Virtual Machine, as a new virtualization framework built upon the Kernel-based Virtual Machine (KVM) hypervisor. PVM does not require hardware-assisted virtualization while working with KVM-enabled software like Kata Containers.

Cloud Hypervisor 38 rolled out this week as the newest version of this Rust-based VMM that was started by Intel while now a Linux Foundation hosted project being worked on by multiple different organizations.

Cyberus Technology announced today the open-source release of a KVM back-end developed for VirtualBox. This new back-end allows the VirtualBox VMM to run virtual machines utilizing the Linux KVM hypervisor instead of the custom kernel module relied upon by the standard Oracle VM VirtualBox software.

Stemming from work done at Amazon Web Services (AWS) for better handling hypervisor live updates, a "request for comments" patch series was sent out on the Linux kernel mailing list for Pkernfs. The Pkernfs proposal was first detailed publicly by AWS last year and is for persisting guest memory and kernel/device state safely across Kexec.

Libvirt as the virtualization API/toolkit developed by Red Hat for managing virtualization on Linux is out today with its v10.0 release.

The KVM virtualization changes for the in-development Linux 6.8 kernel is quite heavy on the feature side.

With the Linux 6.7 kernel there is now KVM virtualization support for LoongArch CPUs. With the upcoming Linux 6.8 kernel cycle, that KVM support is being further extended for these RISC-V-inspired and MIPS64-derived Chinese processors.

QEMU 8.2 has been released as the newest update for this open-source processor emulator that plays an important role within the open-source Linux virtualization stack.

A new Long-Term Support version of Cloud Hypervisor was released this week, which is the open-source project originally started by Intel as a cloud-focused and Rust-written VMM that now has wide industry backing including from multiple other CPU vendors.

AMD Secure Encrypted Virtualization (SEV) and Intel Trust Domain Extensions (TDX) are intended to help provide better security for virtual machines and are key elements to both companies investments around confidential computing. It turns out they have a common enemy in their VM security goals: x86 32-bit software.

As part of AWS Nitro Enclaves, coming for the Linux 6.8 kernel in the new year is a Nitro Secure Module driver.

The Linux Foundation today announced the release of the Xen Project Hypervisor 4.18 for this open-source hypervisor that serves as an alternative to Linux KVM use.

Distrobox 1.6 released on Sunday for this open-source project that makes it easy to launch any Linux distribution inside your terminal. Distrobox builds upon Podman and Docker to allow creating containers of the Linux distribution of your choice and for that to integrate nicely with the host environment. With succeeding releases, Distrobox has built up quite an arsenal of features.