Free virtualization and emulation software
The Quick Emulator (QEMU) is a free and open-source emulator that uses dynamic binary translation to emulate a computer's processor; that is, it translates the emulated binary codes to an equivalent binary format which is executed by the machine. It provides a variety of hardware and device models for the virtual machine, enabling it to run different guest operating systems. QEMU can be used with a Kernel-based Virtual Machine (KVM) to emulate hardware at near-native speeds. Additionally, it supports user-level processes, allowing applications compiled for one processor architecture to run on another.
QEMU supports the emulation of x86, ARM, PowerPC, RISC-V, and other architectures.
Licensing.
QEMU is free software developed by Fabrice Bellard. Different components of QEMU are licensed under the GNU General Public License (GPL), BSD license, GNU Lesser General Public License (LGPL), or other GPL-compatible licenses.
Operating modes.
QEMU has multiple operating modes:
Features.
QEMU supports the emulation of various architectures, including x86, MIPS64 (up to Release 6), SPARC (sun4m and sun4u), ARM (Integrator/CP and Versatile/PB), SuperH, PowerPC (PReP and Power Macintosh), ETRAX CRIS, MicroBlaze, and RISC-V. It supports saving the virtual machine state while all programs are running. Guest operating systems do not need patching to run inside QEMU.
The virtual machine can interface with many types of physical host hardware, including the user's hard disks, CD-ROM drives, network cards, audio interfaces, and USB devices. USB devices can be emulated entirely, or the host's USB devices can be used, although this requires administrator privileges and does not work with some devices.
Virtual disk images can be stored in QCOW format, which can significantly reduce image size. QCOW images only occupy the actual used disk space, not the full configured capacity. This means a configured 120 GB disk may only occupy a few hundred megabytes on the host, as QCOW does not store unused disk space in the image file.
The QCOW2 format also allows the creation of overlay images, which are files that store only the changes made from an original (unmodified) base image file. This enables the emulated disk's contents to be reverted to an earlier state. For instance, a base image could contain a fresh installation of a known working operating system, and overlay images can be used to record changes. Should the guest system become unusable (through virus attack, accidental system destruction, etc.), the user can delete the overlay and use an earlier emulated disk image.
QEMU can emulate network cards (of different models) that share the host system's connectivity by translating network addresses, effectively allowing the guest to use the same network as the host. The virtual network cards can also connect to network cards of other instances of QEMU or to local TAP interfaces. Network connectivity can also be achieved by bridging a TUN/TAP interface used by QEMU with a non-virtual Ethernet interface on the host OS using the host OS's bridging features.
QEMU integrates several services to allow the host and guest systems to communicate for example: an integrated SMB server and network-port redirection (to allow incoming connections to the virtual machine). It can also boot Linux kernels without a bootloader.
QEMU does not depend on the presence of graphical output methods on the host system. Instead, it provides access to the guest OS screen via an integrated VNC server. It can also use an emulated serial line without any screen, with applicable operating systems.
Simulating multiple CPUs running SMP is possible.
QEMU does not require administrative rights to run unless additional kernel modules are used to improve speed (like KQEMU) or certain modes of its network connectivity model are utilized.
Tiny Code Generator.
The Tiny Code Generator (TCG) aims to remove the shortcoming of relying on a particular version of GCC or any compiler, instead incorporating the compiler into other tasks performed by QEMU at run time. The whole translation task thus consists of two parts: basic blocks of target code ("TBs") being rewritten in "TCG ops" – a kind of machine-independent intermediate notation, and subsequently this notation being compiled for the host's architecture by TCG. Optional optimization passes are performed between them, for a just-in-time compiler (JIT) mode.
TCG requires dedicated code written to support every architecture it runs on, so that the JIT knows what to translate the "TCG ops" to. If no dedicated JIT code is available for the architecture, TCG falls back to a slow interpreter mode called TCG Interpreter (TCI). It also requires updating the target code to use TCG ops instead of the old "DynGen" ops.
Starting with QEMU Version 0.10.0, TCG ships with the QEMU stable release. It replaces "DynGen", which relied on GCC 3.x to work.
Accelerator.
KQEMU was a Linux kernel module, also written by Fabrice Bellard, which notably sped up emulation of x86 or x86-64 guests on platforms with the same CPU architecture. This worked by running user mode code (and optionally some kernel code) directly on the host computer's CPU, and by using processor and peripheral emulation only for kernel-mode and real-mode code. KQEMU could execute code from many guest operating systems even if the host CPU did not support hardware-assisted virtualization. KQEMU was initially a closed-source product available free of charge but starting from version 1.3.0pre10 (February 2007), it was relicensed under the GNU General Public License. QEMU versions starting with 0.12.0 (as of  2009[ [update]]) support large memory which makes them incompatible with KQEMU. Newer releases of QEMU have completely removed support for KQEMU.
QVM86 was a GNU GPLv2 licensed drop-in replacement for the then closed-source KQEMU. The developers of QVM86 ceased development in January 2007.
Kernel-based Virtual Machine ("KVM") has mostly taken over as the Linux-based hardware-assisted virtualization solution for use with QEMU following the lack of support for KQEMU and QVM86. QEMU can also use KVM on other architectures like ARM and MIPS.
Intel's Hardware Accelerated Execution Manager ("HAXM") is an open-source alternative to KVM for x86-based hardware-assisted virtualization on NetBSD, Linux, Windows and macOS using Intel VT. As of 2013[ [update]] Intel mostly solicits its use with QEMU for Android development. Starting with version 2.9.0, the official QEMU includes support for HAXM, under the name "Hax".
QEMU also supports the following accelerators:
Supported disk image formats.
QEMU supports the following disk image formats:
QEMU Object Model.
The QEMU Object Model (QOM) provides a framework for registering types that users can make and instantiating objects from those types.
QOM provides the following features:
Parallel emulation.
Virtualization solutions that use QEMU can execute multiple virtual CPUs in parallel. For user-mode emulation, QEMU maps emulated threads to host threads. QEMU can run a host thread for each emulated virtual CPU (vCPU) for full system emulation. This depends on the guest being updated to support parallel system emulation, currently ARM, Alpha, HP-PA, PowerPC, RISC-V, s390x, x86, and Xtensa. Otherwise, a single thread is used to emulate all virtual CPUs (vCPUs), which executes each vCPU in a round-robin manner.
Integration.
VirtualBox.
VirtualBox, first released in January 2007, used some of QEMU's virtual hardware devices, and had a built-in dynamic re-compiler based on QEMU. As with KQEMU, VirtualBox runs nearly all guest code natively on the host via the VMM (Virtual Machine Manager) and uses the re-compiler only as a fallback mechanism – for example, when guest code executes in real mode. In addition, VirtualBox did a lot of code analysis and patching using a built-in disassembler to minimize recompilation. VirtualBox is free and open-source (available under GPL), except for certain features.
Xen-HVM.
Xen, a virtual machine monitor, can run in HVM (hardware virtual machine) mode, using Intel VT-x or AMD-V hardware x86 virtualization extensions and ARM Cortex-A7 and Cortex-A15 virtualization extensions. This means that instead of para-virtualized devices, a real set of virtual hardware is exposed to the DomU, enabling it to use real device drivers.
QEMU includes several components: CPU emulators, emulated devices, generic devices, machine descriptions, user interface, and a debugger. The emulated devices and generic devices in QEMU make up its device models for I/O virtualization. They comprise a PIIX3 IDE (with some rudimentary PIIX4 capabilities), Cirrus Logic or plain VGA emulated video, RTL8139 or E1000 network emulation, and ACPI support. APIC support is provided by Xen.
Xen-HVM utilizes device emulation based on the QEMU project to deliver I/O virtualization to virtual machines (VMs). Hardware is emulated through a QEMU "device model" daemon running as a backend in Dom0. Unlike other QEMU modes, such as dynamic translation or KVM, the hypervisor fully manages virtual CPUs, pausing them as necessary while QEMU handles memory-mapped I/O emulation.
KVM.
KVM (Kernel-based Virtual Machine) is a FreeBSD and Linux kernel module that allows a user space program access to the hardware virtualization features of various processors, with which QEMU can offer virtualization for x86, PowerPC, and S/390 guests. When the target architecture is the same as the host architecture, QEMU can make use of KVM particular features, such as acceleration.
Win4Lin Pro Desktop.
In early 2005, Win4Lin introduced Win4Lin Pro Desktop, based on a 'tuned' version of QEMU and KQEMU and it hosts NT-versions of Windows. In June 2006, Win4Lin released Win4Lin Virtual Desktop Server based on the same code base. Win4Lin Virtual Desktop Server serves Microsoft Windows sessions to thin clients from a Linux server.
In September 2006, Win4Lin announced a change of the company name to Virtual Bridges with the release of Win4BSD Pro Desktop, a port of the product to FreeBSD and PC-BSD. Solaris support followed in May 2007 with the release of Win4Solaris Pro Desktop and Win4Solaris Virtual Desktop Server.
SerialICE.
SerialICE is a QEMU-based firmware debugging tool running system firmware inside of QEMU while accessing real hardware through a serial connection to a host system. This can be used as a cheap replacement for hardware in-circuit emulators (ICE).
WinUAE.
WinUAE introduced support for the CyberStorm PPC and Blizzard 603e boards using the QEMU PPC core in version 3.0.0.
Unicorn.
Unicorn is a CPU emulation framework based on QEMU's "TCG" CPU emulator. Unlike QEMU, Unicorn focuses on the CPU "only": no emulation of any peripherals is provided and raw binary code (outside of the context of an executable file or a system image) can be run directly. Unicorn is thread-safe and has multiple bindings and instrumentation interfaces.
Limbo x86 PC Emulator.
Limbo is an x86 and ARM64 QEMU-based virtual machine for Android. It is one of the few pieces of virtual machine software available for Android capable of emulating Microsoft Windows, although it was designed to emulate Linux and DOS. Unlike other QEMU-based emulators, it does not require users to type commands to use, instead having a user interface to set the virtual machine's settings.
It is more popular in developing countries in Asia such as India, Malaysia, and Thailand on YouTube due to the high usage of the Android Operating System. Limbo was removed from the Google Play Store for unknown reasons between February 2019 and December 2020, though it can still be installed off the developer's website with an APK (Android Package) installation. Limbo tends to have issues regarding its audio quality and playback. No fixes have been found for these problems as of 2024. Overall, Limbo is less well-known than other virtual machine software, which leads to less available information regarding its troubleshooting.
It is required to install an application known as "Hacker's Keyboard" to use many keyboard functions that a basic Android keyboard cannot do in Limbo x86, such as the Ctrl, Alt, Del, and function keys. It is recommended to install Hacker's Keyboard with an APK file, as the Google Play version says it doesn't work with newer versions of Android.
Emulated hardware platforms.
x86.
QEMU can emulate the i386 and x86_64 architectures. Besides the CPU (which is also configurable and can emulate a number of Intel CPU models including as of 3 March 2018 Sandy Bridge, Ivy Bridge, Haswell, Broadwell and Skylake), the following devices are emulated:
The BIOS implementation used by QEMU starting from version 0.12 is SeaBIOS. The VGA BIOS implementation of SeaBIOS is also used starting from version 2.0.0. The UEFI firmware for QEMU is OVMF.
PowerPC.
PowerMac.
QEMU emulates the following PowerMac peripherals:
OpenBIOS is used as the firmware.
PREP.
QEMU emulates the following PREP peripherals:
On the PREP target, "Open Hack'Ware", an Open-Firmware-compatible BIOS, is used.
IBM System p.
QEMU can emulate the paravirtual sPAPR interface with the following peripherals:
On the sPAPR target, another Open-Firmware-compatible BIOS is used, called SLOF.
ARM.
ARM32.
QEMU emulates the ARMv7 instruction set (and down to ARMv5TEJ) with NEON extension. It emulates full systems like Integrator/CP board, Versatile baseboard, RealView Emulation baseboard, XScale-based PDAs, Palm Tungsten|E PDA, Nokia N800 and Nokia N810 Internet tablets, etc. QEMU also powers the Android emulator which is part