QEMU 8.1 Released With New PipeWire Audio Backend, Many CPU Improvements

QEMU 8.1 is now available as the latest feature update to this important piece of the open-source Linux virtualization stack.

QEMU 8.1 brings a number of new features including:

- New x86 CPU model of Intel Granite Rapids.

- The Tiny Code Generator (TCG) now supports RDPID instruction, AES instructions can use AES acceleration on the host processor, and other new features exposed.

- A wide variety of RISC-V architecture improvements from supporting BF16 extensions to the Zfa extension, Zcm* extensions, and many others. The Ventana Veyron V1 CPU has also been added plus many RISC-V fixes.

- Support for LoongArch LSX extensions and various fixes for this CPU architecture.

- KVM VMs on a host with support for the Memory Tagging Extension (MTE) can now use MTE within the guests.

- Adding the new CPU type of Cortex Neoverse V1 (neoverse-v1). Separately on the ARM side there is also a new Banana Pi BPI-M2 Ultra (bpim2u) board model.

- A new "virtio-multiotuch-pci" input device was added as a multi-touch capable input device.

- Improved e1000e and IGB Intel network device emulation.

- Shadow virtqueue offload support for the vhost-vDPA interface.

- A new PipeWire based audio back-end for QEMU.

- Support for multi-touch events with the GTK interface.

More details on the dozens of QEMU 8.1 feature changes via the QEMU Wiki. QEMU 8.1 can be downloaded from QEMU.org.