QEMU 2.4 Adding Support For TPM2, KVM System Management Mode & More

QEMU 2.4.0-rc0 was just tagged in Git. As usual, this update to an important piece to the open-source Linux virtualization stack will come with many new features when it officially ships later this summer.

QEMU 2.4 has acquired support for ACPI 5.1 tables with the "-M virt" board, various MIPS improvements, x86 improvements to the system management emulation mode, KVM system management mode support when paired with Linux 4.1 or newer, various virtual device improvements, support for TPM2, the new VirtIO-GPU device for use with the VirtIO DRM driver in Linux 4.2 for 2D acceleration, and many other updates.

The VirtIO DRM driver addition for Linux 4.2 is exciting and it's good to see it will be supported by QEMU 2.4. Eventually this DRM driver will be used in conjunction with Virgil3D for offering 3D/OpenGL guest acceleration support over KVM/QEMU.

Also for those running Windows guests is a potentially big change. The item reads, "Support for MMIO operations outside the "big QEMU lock". For now, this only applies to the ACPI PM timer, which can alone improve performance substantially for very large Windows guests as long as they do not span multiple NUMA nodes in the host. For guests that span multiple NUMA nodes more kernel changes are required."

More details on the upcoming QEMU 2.4 changes can be found via this QEMU.org Wiki page.