From: Alexander Graf <graf@amazon.com>
To: <qemu-devel@nongnu.org>
Cc: <qemu-arm@nongnu.org>, Peter Maydell <peter.maydell@linaro.org>,
"Thomas Huth" <thuth@redhat.com>, <alex.bennee@linaro.org>,
<philmd@linaro.org>, <berrange@redhat.com>,
<marcandre.lureau@redhat.com>, Cornelia Huck <cohuck@redhat.com>,
<mst@redhat.com>, Dorjoy Chowdhury <dorjoychy111@gmail.com>,
Pierrick Bouvier <pierrick.bouvier@linaro.org>,
Paolo Bonzini <pbonzini@redhat.com>,
Tyler Fanelli <tfanelli@redhat.com>, <mknaust@amazon.com>,
<nh-open-source@amazon.com>
Subject: [PATCH 00/10] Native Nitro Enclaves support
Date: Wed, 18 Feb 2026 01:51:40 +0000 [thread overview]
Message-ID: <20260218015151.4052-1-graf@amazon.com> (raw)
We had emulated Nitro Enclaves support in QEMU since 2024, but to launch
a native Nitro Enclave, you could only use the AWS nitro-cli tooling.
To simplify tooling and allow users to leverage the most convenient swiss
army knife of virtualization known to mankind (QEMU!), add native support
to launch a Nitro Enclave from within QEMU.
A Nitro Enclave is a Confidential Computing Virtual Machine spawned by
the Nitro Hypervisor which has a very basic machine model, with
virtio-vsock as the only real I/O between parent and enclave. This means
the amount of interactions between QEMU and the VM are limited, but for
debugging, experimentation and non-conventional use cases, it can be handy
to spawn a Nitro Enclave directly in a more fully featured virtualization
stack.
Example invocation:
$ qemu-system-x86_64 -nographic -accel nitro,debug-mode=on -M nitro -kernel test.eif -smp 2
QEMU 10.2.50 monitor - type 'help' for more information
(qemu) [ 0.000000] Linux version 4.14.256-209.484.amzn2.x86_64 (mockbuild@ip-10-0-50-84) (gcc version 7.3.1 20180712 (Red Hat 7.3.1-13) (GCC)) #1 SMP Tue Jan 11 21:47:36 UTC 2022
[ 0.000000] Command line: reboot=k panic=30 pci=off nomodules console=ttyS0 i8042.noaux i8042.nomux i8042.nopnp i8042.dumbkbd random.trust_cpu=on virtio_mmio.device=4K@0xd0000000:5 virtio_mmio.device=4K@0xd0001000:6
[ 0.000000] x86/fpu: Supporting XSAVE feature 0x001: 'x87 floating point registers'
[ 0.000000] x86/fpu: Supporting XSAVE feature 0x002: 'SSE registers'
[ 0.000000] x86/fpu: Supporting XSAVE feature 0x004: 'AVX registers'
This patch set supports x86_64 as well as aarch64 Nitro Enclaves.
Virtio-vsock communication with the Enclave is handled directly through the
parent's virtio-vsock device.
Alex
Alexander Graf (10):
scripts/update-linux-headers: Add Nitro Enclaves header
linux-headers: Add nitro_enclaves.h
accel: Add Nitro Enclaves accelerator
hw/nitro/nitro-serial-vsock: Nitro Enclaves vsock console
hw/nitro: Introduce Nitro Enclave Heartbeat device
target/arm/cpu64: Allow -host for nitro
hw/nitro: Add nitro machine
hw/core/eif: Move definitions to header
hw/nitro: Enable direct kernel boot
docs: Add Nitro Enclaves documentation
MAINTAINERS | 12 +
accel/Kconfig | 3 +
accel/meson.build | 1 +
accel/nitro/meson.build | 3 +
accel/nitro/nitro-accel.c | 334 ++++++++++++++++
accel/nitro/trace-events | 6 +
accel/nitro/trace.h | 2 +
accel/stubs/meson.build | 1 +
accel/stubs/nitro-stub.c | 11 +
docs/system/confidential-guest-support.rst | 1 +
docs/system/index.rst | 1 +
docs/system/nitro.rst | 114 ++++++
hw/Kconfig | 1 +
hw/core/eif.c | 38 --
hw/core/eif.h | 41 ++
hw/meson.build | 1 +
hw/nitro/Kconfig | 14 +
hw/nitro/heartbeat.c | 118 ++++++
hw/nitro/machine.c | 297 +++++++++++++++
hw/nitro/meson.build | 3 +
hw/nitro/serial-vsock.c | 155 ++++++++
hw/nitro/trace-events | 8 +
hw/nitro/trace.h | 1 +
include/hw/nitro/heartbeat.h | 25 ++
include/hw/nitro/machine.h | 20 +
include/hw/nitro/serial-vsock.h | 26 ++
.../standard-headers/linux/nitro_enclaves.h | 359 ++++++++++++++++++
include/system/hw_accel.h | 1 +
include/system/nitro-accel.h | 25 ++
meson.build | 12 +
meson_options.txt | 2 +
qemu-options.hx | 8 +-
scripts/meson-buildoptions.sh | 3 +
scripts/update-linux-headers.sh | 1 +
target/arm/cpu64.c | 8 +
35 files changed, 1614 insertions(+), 42 deletions(-)
create mode 100644 accel/nitro/meson.build
create mode 100644 accel/nitro/nitro-accel.c
create mode 100644 accel/nitro/trace-events
create mode 100644 accel/nitro/trace.h
create mode 100644 accel/stubs/nitro-stub.c
create mode 100644 docs/system/nitro.rst
create mode 100644 hw/nitro/Kconfig
create mode 100644 hw/nitro/heartbeat.c
create mode 100644 hw/nitro/machine.c
create mode 100644 hw/nitro/meson.build
create mode 100644 hw/nitro/serial-vsock.c
create mode 100644 hw/nitro/trace-events
create mode 100644 hw/nitro/trace.h
create mode 100644 include/hw/nitro/heartbeat.h
create mode 100644 include/hw/nitro/machine.h
create mode 100644 include/hw/nitro/serial-vsock.h
create mode 100644 include/standard-headers/linux/nitro_enclaves.h
create mode 100644 include/system/nitro-accel.h
--
2.47.1
Amazon Web Services Development Center Germany GmbH
Tamara-Danz-Str. 13
10243 Berlin
Geschaeftsfuehrung: Christof Hellmis, Andreas Stieger
Eingetragen am Amtsgericht Charlottenburg unter HRB 257764 B
Sitz: Berlin
Ust-ID: DE 365 538 597
next reply other threads:[~2026-02-18 1:52 UTC|newest]
Thread overview: 19+ messages / expand[flat|nested] mbox.gz Atom feed top
2026-02-18 1:51 Alexander Graf [this message]
2026-02-18 1:51 ` [PATCH 01/10] scripts/update-linux-headers: Add Nitro Enclaves header Alexander Graf
2026-02-18 1:51 ` [PATCH 02/10] linux-headers: Add nitro_enclaves.h Alexander Graf
2026-02-18 1:51 ` [PATCH 03/10] accel: Add Nitro Enclaves accelerator Alexander Graf
2026-02-24 10:22 ` Paolo Bonzini
2026-02-24 23:16 ` Alexander Graf
2026-02-18 1:51 ` [PATCH 04/10] hw/nitro/nitro-serial-vsock: Nitro Enclaves vsock console Alexander Graf
2026-02-18 1:51 ` [PATCH 05/10] hw/nitro: Introduce Nitro Enclave Heartbeat device Alexander Graf
2026-02-18 1:51 ` [PATCH 06/10] target/arm/cpu64: Allow -host for nitro Alexander Graf
2026-02-18 1:51 ` [PATCH 07/10] hw/nitro: Add nitro machine Alexander Graf
2026-02-18 3:27 ` Mohamed Mediouni
2026-02-18 9:20 ` Alexander Graf
2026-02-20 14:59 ` Michael S. Tsirkin
2026-02-20 15:07 ` Alexander Graf
2026-02-18 1:51 ` [PATCH 08/10] hw/core/eif: Move definitions to header Alexander Graf
2026-02-18 15:12 ` Dorjoy Chowdhury
2026-02-18 1:51 ` [PATCH 09/10] hw/nitro: Enable direct kernel boot Alexander Graf
2026-02-18 1:51 ` [PATCH 10/10] docs: Add Nitro Enclaves documentation Alexander Graf
2026-02-24 10:26 ` Paolo Bonzini
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