Virtualization News Archives

Google engineers on Thursday posted initial "request for comments" patches on their KVM-CPUFreq driver that is part of their effort to improve the dynamic voltage and frequency scaling behavior and task placement within KVM-based virtual machines. This effort is leading to big improvements in raw performance and performance-per-Watt for tasks running within Linux VMs.

The focus of this new effort isn't to immediately rewrite the Xen virtualization hypervisor in Rust but to begin gradually working toward rewriting some of the smaller Xen Project components in the Rust programming language and to see how everything pans out.

A lot of Kernel-based Virtual Machine (KVM) updates were merged for the Linux 6.3 cycle to further enhance the open-source virtualization stack.

Cloud Hypervisor as a reminder is what started out as an open-source Intel project to develop a modern hypervisor focused on cloud workloads and with security being among the leading concerns. Cloud Hypervisor more recently is developed as a Linux Foundation project but with Intel's software engineers being among the leading contributors to the project along with the likes of Arm, Tencent, Bytedance, and Microsoft.

Several months back I wrote about Microsoft working on nested hypervisor support for Hyper-V with the Linux kernel. That work is now ready to go for the in-development Linux 6.3 cycle.

Google engineer Yu Zhao known for his work on MGLRU has published a new patch series today that "significantly improves" the KVM guest performance when the host system is under heavy memory pressure.

While LoongArch merged for Linux 5.19 last year, that initial kernel port to the Chinese CPU architecture wasn't entirely complete and some Loongson 3A5000 features are still being enabled for the mainline kernel. The latest feature work being carried out by Loongson engineers is for supporting hardware virtualization on the 3A5000 processors with KVM.

Libvirt 9.0 was released on Monday as the newest version of this Linux Virtualization API. This virtualization API backed by Red Hat continues to support a wide range of hypervisors and with the v9.0 release has added additional functionality.

Cloud Hypervisor 29.0 has been released as the open-source virtualization hypervisor that was started by Intel but then began seeing support by the likes of Microsoft and Arm. Cloud Hypervisor was since spunoff to the Linux Foundation where it continues seeing more industry support by the likes of AMD and Ampere.

Ampere Computing is the latest major vendor now backing the Cloud Hypervisor Project hosted by the Linux Foundation as a Rust-written VMM focused on running modern cloud workloads in a fast and secure manner.

The initial batch of feature updates for the Kernel-based Virtual Machine (KVM) have been submitted for the Linux 6.2 merge window.

The QEMU open-source emulator that plays an important role in the Linux virtualization stack is out with its version 7.2 release ahead of the Christmas holidays.

After being in various forms of discussion since 2017, IOMMUFD has been submitted for the Linux 6.2 kernel as it lays the groundwork for aiming to overhaul IOMMU handling by QEMU and virtual machines on Linux.

Cloud Hypervisor as the open-source, Rust-written and modern hypervisor project that was started by Intel and now also backed by AMD, Arm, Microsoft, and other vendors is out with a big release.

QEMU 7.2 is gearing up for release in December as the next feature release to this widely-used processor emulator by the Linux virtualization stack. QEMU 7.2-rc1 is available for testing with a number of new features and improvements coming in this release.

Anbox Cloud as Canonical's solution for Android containers in the cloud is out with a shiny new feature release.

The Xen hypervisor changes were merged this week for the Linux 6.1 kernel merge window that is wrapping up this weekend.

The VirtIO changes were merged this week for the Linux 6.1 merge window that is ending this weekend.

The 9P network protocol is commonly used -- such as with QEMU's 9pfs pass-through file-system -- for being able to share certain directories/files on host machines with the guest operating systems. With Linux 6.1 the 9p code has seen a nice set of optimizations that can allow for faster communication between the host and guest(s).

At last week's XDC 2022 conference, Google engineer Rob Clark presented on VirtGPU DRM Native Contexts and the potential there for much better performance - especially for gaming - within virtual machines than using API-level virtualization like with Virgl.

It's been a long time since last having anything significant to report on for Oracle's VM VirtualBox software: VirtualBox 6.0 debuted in 2018 and VirtualBox 6.1 in 2019, but since has been rather quiet... But out today is now VirtualBox 7.0 with big features like support for full virtual machine encryption and a new Direct3D 11 based graphics stack, which for Linux use is now going through DXVK.

Cloud-Hypervisor as what started as an open-source project by Intel and now run under the Linux Foundation umbrella as a Rust-based, modern-focused hypervisor for cloud workloads keeps on advancing. In addition to Intel, Microsoft and Arm continue investing significant resources into Cloud-Hypervisor for this security-focused VMM for running Windows and Linux guests.

QEMU 7.1 is now available as the latest feature release for this processor emulator that plays an important role in the open-source Linux virtualization stack.

Cloud Hypervisor 26.0 released this week as the newest version of this Rust-based hypervisor focused on cloud workloads and secure computing. The open-source Cloud Hypervisor started out as an Intel software project and continues to be led by them while now under Linux Foundation stewardship and continuing to see contributions from the likes of Arm and Microsoft.

A number of changes were merged into Linux 6.0 for benefiting virtualization when making use of VirtIO.

There are a few notable changes worth mentioning when it comes to KVM virtualization with Linux 6.0.

QEMU 7.1 is working its way toward release as the next major version of this open-source processor emulator that plays an important role in the open-source virtualization stack.

Cloud Hypervisor as what started out as an Intel open-source project and now lives under the Linux Foundation umbrella as a virtual machine monitor (VMM) for use with Linux KVM and Windows MSHV is out with a new feature release.

Various hypervisors expose support for the XSAVEC instruction as an XSAVE with compaction as an efficiency optimization. However, the Linux kernel doesn't currently make use of XSAVEC as an alternative to XSAVES (supervisor mode) but that is now changing with Linux 5.19.

Following recent rumors of Broadcom pursuing a VMware acquisition, Broadcom announced today their intent to acquire the virtualization company for $61 billion (USD).

Both the KVM and Xen changes are ready to go with the other code piling on for the Linux 5.19 merge window.

Cloud-Hypervisor as the open-source, Rust-based virtual machine monitor with a focus on security is out with its latest feature release. Cloud-Hypervisor started as one of many Intel open-source projects that last year shifted to under the Linux Foundation umbrella but still sees contributions from Intel as well as other industry leaders like Microsoft and Arm. Cloud-Hypervisor 24.0 is the newest version of this Rust VMM

Security researcher Jason Donenfeld who is known for leading the development of the WireGuard open-source software has outlined a new security vulnerability affecting the Oracle VM VirtualBox software.

VMware has merged support for SVGAv3 into Mesa 22.2. SVGAv3 is the latest update to their virtual graphics device for allowing 3D guest virtual machine acceleration with VMware's virtualization products.

QEMU 7.0 is out today as the newest version of this important piece of the open-source Linux virtualization stack.

Being worked on for a while has been a more powerful Motorola 68000 "m68k" virtualization target. It looks like that new virtual machine target will come with Linux 5.19 for allowing m68k guests with up to 3.2GB of RAM and up to 128 VirtIO devices.

The "virtio-crypto" kernel driver for supporting the VirtIO-spec'ed virtual crypto hardware accelerator for virtual machines is about to offer significantly better performance.

Cloud-Hypervisor is the Rust-written, KVM-leveraging VMM started by Intel that is now developed under the Linux Foundation umbrella with Arm, Microsoft, and others also contributing to this project focused on cloud virtualization needs. Cloud-Hypervisor 23.0 is out today with the latest features for this increasingly capable open-source virtual machine monitor.

Last week saw the main KVM virtualization pull for the Linux 5.18 feature updates while sent in today was a second batch of improvements for the Kernel-based Virtual Machine.

The initial batch of KVM virtualization changes were merged last week for the ongoing Linux 5.18 merge window.

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.

The Rust-based Cloud-Hypervisor that started out as an open-source VMM at Intel for cloud workloads and now developed under the Linux Foundation is out with a new feature release.

VMware engineers are in the process of enabling 3D acceleration within their VMWGFX driver on AArch64 so those making use of VMware virtualization software on 64-bit Arm will be able to enjoy accelerated 3D guest virtual machines.

Google engineers have posted a big patch series for Linux as they work on a new Address Space Isolation implementation for KVM to help mitigate various types of speculative execution attacks.

Qualcomm by way of their QuiC innovation center have been developing Gunyah as an open-source type-1 hypervisor. Posted on Wednesday were the initial patches providing Linux driver support for Gunyah.

Mesa's Virgl code as part of the Virgil 3D GPU project allows for OpenGL/3D acceleration within QEMU virtual machines with the driver calls then being passed onto the host GPU. Mesa's Virgl code to this stage has relied upon the Gallium3D TGSI intermediate representation while they are working on moving it to the modern and superior NIR.

Cloud-Hypervisor 21.0 was released this past week as its first feature release since this open-source Intel project moved to the Linux Foundation with backing from Microsoft and Arm. Cloud-Hypervisor 21.0 brings new features and fixes to this Rust-written hypervisor.

The Kernel-based Virtual Machine (KVM) changes for Linux 5.17 bring several feature additions.

Libvirt 8.0 has been released for this open-source Virtualization API and associated daemon/tools for managing KVM, Xen, and other hypervisors.

For those assigning VFIO devices to guest virtual machines, the initialization/start-up process may soon be much faster with a set of patches volleyed by Oracle.