[Qemu-devel] usecase for QEMU

[Qemu-devel] usecase for QEMU

[Xin Tong]

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I am wondering what are some of the use cases for QEMU as an instruction
set emulator(not KVM). I know QEMU is used for the android emulator and
QEMU is used to host a few cycle accurate simulators ?

what else ?

Thank you,
Xin

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Re: [Qemu-devel] usecase for QEMU

[Laurent Desnogues]

On Thu, Nov 28, 2013 at 3:27 AM, Xin Tong <trent.tong@gmail.com> wrote:
> I am wondering what are some of the use cases for QEMU as an instruction set
> emulator(not KVM). I know QEMU is used for the android emulator and QEMU is
> used to host a few cycle accurate simulators ?
>
> what else ?

QEMU can be used to experiment with new instruction sets.  It can also
be used to analyze various things such as cache, branch predictions, etc.
Of course that requires heavy code development.


Laurent

Re: [Qemu-devel] usecase for QEMU

[Andreas Färber]

Am 28.11.2013 03:27, schrieb Xin Tong:
> I am wondering what are some of the use cases for QEMU as an instruction
> set emulator(not KVM).

Why? :)

> I know QEMU is used for the android emulator and
> QEMU is used to host a few cycle accurate simulators ?
> 
> what else ?

QEMU as-is (without source code modifications) has quite a few use cases
beyond KVM - it exists much longer than KVM.

qemu-system-* can be used to test/port userspace software on platforms
you don't have the hardware for, such as different endianness. Kernel
and firmware development may have faster turnaround times than with real
hardware and may be more automation-friendly. Same with source code
modifications for new devices, obviously.

linux-user, in particular qemu-arm, is used for cross-building several
Linux distributions. Scratchbox is another tool-set using it IIRC.

Regards,
Andreas

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