[Qemu-devel] Code Copy / New Linux boot code

[Fabrice Bellard <fabrice.bellard@free.fr>]

Just to give more information about the next commits:

1) I finally added a hand coded x86 to x86 translator. It means that 
qemu-fast has now close to native performances on x86. Who spoke about 
PC virtualization ? :-)

The x86 to x86 translator is limited to flat 32 bit mode and it does not 
support floating point (yet !). If the translator cannot handle a given 
instruction, then the "portable" translator is used as a fallback.

2) qemu-fast is being enhanced to run unpatched OSes and to support VESA 
VBE graphics.

The limitations of qemu-fast are that if data at addresses >= 0xc0000000 
is used, then soft MMU is used in the corresponding translated block.

Moreover, the guest user code has write access to the guest OS code and 
also to the host QEMU code. It means that qemu-fast is not safe. I don't 
know yet what is the best way to solve this issue.

3) A new and simpler Linux kernel loader has been added (for the 
'-kernel' command line option). Now the PC BIOS and the VGA BIOS are run 
before running the kernel, which gives exactly the same behavior as if 
the kernel was booted normally.

Fabrice.