[Qemu-devel] Re: Status on ARM host cpu

[Jan Kiszka <jan.kiszka@web.de>]

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Steffen Liebergeld wrote:
> Hi Paul,
> 
> Paul Brook <paul@codesourcery.com> schrieb:
>> On Friday 14 November 2008, Steffen Liebergeld wrote:
>>> Hi,
>>>
>>> I am currently researching of whether or not it is feasible to port kqemu
>>> to the ARM platform. The website says qemu on ARM hosts is in
>>> "testing"-state. Does that still apply to the latest svn-Version?
>> Should just about work, though you should expect bugs.
> 
>> However I advise using KVM and not kqemu. KVM has already been merged to 
>> upstream kernels, and the chances of getting another hypervisor interface 
>> merged are approximately zero.
> 
> KVM is not an option for me (and is not available for the ARM-platform).

(...so is KQEMU)

> I plan to port kqemu for the ARM-platform. Do have any estimates, for how much
> work would be needed to adopt the kqemu-Interface of qemu (which is
> x86-centric) to ARM (ignoring the effort needed to port the
> kqemu-kernel-module)?

You should start with studying both KVM and KQEMU in more details.
Before thinking about which interface to implement, first clarify what
approach you actually need for ARM. I don't think that arch is as weird
as x86. Virtualization-wise it will rather be close to PowerPC e.g. And
for PowerPC (440) there is already kvm support...

But even if you had to implement a KQEMU-comparable VMM for ARM, you
should definitely use KVM's interface and infrastructure (which goes
beyond KQEMU). Rather extend it if that's required. Only that way your
work would have a chance to become mainline and benefit from the ongoing
development in KVM and QEMU. Believe us. :)

Jan


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