1 \input texinfo @c -*- texinfo -*-
3 @settitle QEMU CPU Emulator Reference Documentation
6 @center @titlefont{QEMU CPU Emulator Reference Documentation}
14 QEMU is a FAST! processor emulator. By using dynamic translation it
15 achieves a reasonnable speed while being easy to port on new host
18 QEMU has two operating modes:
20 @item User mode emulation. In this mode, QEMU can launch Linux processes
21 compiled for one CPU on another CPU. Linux system calls are converted
22 because of endianness and 32/64 bit mismatches. The Wine Windows API
23 emulator (@url{http://www.winehq.org}) and the DOSEMU DOS emulator
24 (@url{www.dosemu.org}) are the main targets for QEMU.
26 @item Full system emulation. In this mode, QEMU emulates a full
27 system, including a processor and various peripherials. Currently, it
28 is only used to launch an x86 Linux kernel on an x86 Linux system. It
29 enables easier testing and debugging of system code. It can also be
30 used to provide virtual hosting of several virtual PCs on a single
35 As QEMU requires no host kernel patches to run, it is very safe and
38 QEMU generic features:
42 @item User space only or full system emulation.
44 @item Using dynamic translation to native code for reasonnable speed.
46 @item Working on x86 and PowerPC hosts. Being tested on ARM, Sparc32, Alpha and S390.
48 @item Self-modifying code support.
50 @item Precise exceptions support.
52 @item The virtual CPU is a library (@code{libqemu}) which can be used
57 QEMU user mode emulation features:
59 @item Generic Linux system call converter, including most ioctls.
61 @item clone() emulation using native CPU clone() to use Linux scheduler for threads.
63 @item Accurate signal handling by remapping host signals to target signals.
67 QEMU full system emulation features:
69 @item Using mmap() system calls to simulate the MMU
72 @section x86 emulation
74 QEMU x86 target features:
78 @item The virtual x86 CPU supports 16 bit and 32 bit addressing with segmentation.
79 LDT/GDT and IDT are emulated. VM86 mode is also supported to run DOSEMU.
81 @item Support of host page sizes bigger than 4KB in user mode emulation.
83 @item QEMU can emulate itself on x86.
85 @item An extensive Linux x86 CPU test program is included @file{tests/test-i386}.
86 It can be used to test other x86 virtual CPUs.
90 Current QEMU limitations:
94 @item No SSE/MMX support (yet).
96 @item No x86-64 support.
98 @item IPC syscalls are missing.
100 @item The x86 segment limits and access rights are not tested at every
103 @item On non x86 host CPUs, @code{double}s are used instead of the non standard
104 10 byte @code{long double}s of x86 for floating point emulation to get
105 maximum performances.
107 @item Full system emulation only works if no data are mapped above the virtual address
110 @item Some priviledged instructions or behaviors are missing. Only the ones
111 needed for proper Linux kernel operation are emulated.
113 @item No memory separation between the kernel and the user processes is done.
114 It will be implemented very soon.
118 @section ARM emulation
122 @item ARM emulation can currently launch small programs while using the
123 generic dynamic code generation architecture of QEMU.
125 @item No FPU support (yet).
127 @item No automatic regression testing (yet).
131 @chapter QEMU User space emulator invocation
135 If you need to compile QEMU, please read the @file{README} which gives
136 the related information.
138 In order to launch a Linux process, QEMU needs the process executable
139 itself and all the target (x86) dynamic libraries used by it.
143 @item On x86, you can just try to launch any process by using the native
150 @code{-L /} tells that the x86 dynamic linker must be searched with a
153 @item Since QEMU is also a linux process, you can launch qemu with qemu:
156 qemu -L / qemu -L / /bin/ls
159 @item On non x86 CPUs, you need first to download at least an x86 glibc
160 (@file{qemu-XXX-i386-glibc21.tar.gz} on the QEMU web page). Ensure that
161 @code{LD_LIBRARY_PATH} is not set:
164 unset LD_LIBRARY_PATH
167 Then you can launch the precompiled @file{ls} x86 executable:
170 qemu /usr/local/qemu-i386/bin/ls-i386
172 You can look at @file{/usr/local/qemu-i386/bin/qemu-conf.sh} so that
173 QEMU is automatically launched by the Linux kernel when you try to
174 launch x86 executables. It requires the @code{binfmt_misc} module in the
177 @item The x86 version of QEMU is also included. You can try weird things such as:
179 qemu /usr/local/qemu-i386/bin/qemu-i386 /usr/local/qemu-i386/bin/ls-i386
188 @item Ensure that you have a working QEMU with the x86 glibc
189 distribution (see previous section). In order to verify it, you must be
193 qemu /usr/local/qemu-i386/bin/ls-i386
196 @item Download the binary x86 Wine install
197 (@file{qemu-XXX-i386-wine.tar.gz} on the QEMU web page).
199 @item Configure Wine on your account. Look at the provided script
200 @file{/usr/local/qemu-i386/bin/wine-conf.sh}. Your previous
201 @code{$@{HOME@}/.wine} directory is saved to @code{$@{HOME@}/.wine.org}.
203 @item Then you can try the example @file{putty.exe}:
206 qemu /usr/local/qemu-i386/wine/bin/wine /usr/local/qemu-i386/wine/c/Program\ Files/putty.exe
211 @section Command line options
214 usage: qemu [-h] [-d] [-L path] [-s size] program [arguments...]
221 Set the x86 elf interpreter prefix (default=/usr/local/qemu-i386)
223 Set the x86 stack size in bytes (default=524288)
230 Activate log (logfile=/tmp/qemu.log)
232 Act as if the host page size was 'pagesize' bytes
235 @chapter QEMU System emulator invocation
239 This section explains how to launch a Linux kernel inside QEMU.
243 Download the archive @file{vl-test-xxx.tar.gz} containing a Linux kernel
244 and an initrd (initial Ram Disk). The archive also contains a
245 precompiled version of @file{vl}, the QEMU System emulator.
247 @item Optional: If you want network support (for example to launch X11 examples), you
248 must copy the script @file{vl-ifup} in @file{/etc} and configure
249 properly @code{sudo} so that the command @code{ifconfig} contained in
250 @file{vl-ifup} can be executed as root. You must verify that your host
251 kernel supports the TUN/TAP network interfaces: the device
252 @file{/dev/net/tun} must be present.
254 When network is enabled, there is a virtual network connection between
255 the host kernel and the emulated kernel. The emulated kernel is seen
256 from the host kernel at IP address 172.20.0.2 and the host kernel is
257 seen from the emulated kernel at IP address 172.20.0.1.
259 @item Launch @code{vl.sh}. You should have the following output:
263 connected to host network interface: tun0
264 Uncompressing Linux... Ok, booting the kernel.
265 Linux version 2.4.20 (bellard@voyager) (gcc version 2.95.2 20000220 (Debian GNU/Linux)) #42 Wed Jun 25 14:16:12 CEST 2003
266 BIOS-provided physical RAM map:
267 BIOS-88: 0000000000000000 - 000000000009f000 (usable)
268 BIOS-88: 0000000000100000 - 0000000002000000 (usable)
269 32MB LOWMEM available.
270 On node 0 totalpages: 8192
274 Kernel command line: root=/dev/ram ramdisk_size=6144
276 Detected 501.785 MHz processor.
277 Calibrating delay loop... 973.20 BogoMIPS
278 Memory: 24776k/32768k available (725k kernel code, 7604k reserved, 151k data, 48k init, 0k highmem)
279 Dentry cache hash table entries: 4096 (order: 3, 32768 bytes)
280 Inode cache hash table entries: 2048 (order: 2, 16384 bytes)
281 Mount-cache hash table entries: 512 (order: 0, 4096 bytes)
282 Buffer-cache hash table entries: 1024 (order: 0, 4096 bytes)
283 Page-cache hash table entries: 8192 (order: 3, 32768 bytes)
284 CPU: Intel Pentium Pro stepping 03
285 Checking 'hlt' instruction... OK.
286 POSIX conformance testing by UNIFIX
287 Linux NET4.0 for Linux 2.4
288 Based upon Swansea University Computer Society NET3.039
289 Initializing RT netlink socket
292 pty: 256 Unix98 ptys configured
293 Serial driver version 5.05c (2001-07-08) with no serial options enabled
294 ttyS00 at 0x03f8 (irq = 4) is a 16450
296 Last modified Nov 1, 2000 by Paul Gortmaker
297 NE*000 ethercard probe at 0x300: 52 54 00 12 34 56
298 eth0: NE2000 found at 0x300, using IRQ 9.
299 RAMDISK driver initialized: 16 RAM disks of 6144K size 1024 blocksize
300 NET4: Linux TCP/IP 1.0 for NET4.0
301 IP Protocols: ICMP, UDP, TCP, IGMP
302 IP: routing cache hash table of 512 buckets, 4Kbytes
303 TCP: Hash tables configured (established 2048 bind 2048)
304 NET4: Unix domain sockets 1.0/SMP for Linux NET4.0.
305 RAMDISK: ext2 filesystem found at block 0
306 RAMDISK: Loading 6144 blocks [1 disk] into ram disk... done.
307 Freeing initrd memory: 6144k freed
308 VFS: Mounted root (ext2 filesystem).
309 Freeing unused kernel memory: 48k freed
310 sh: can't access tty; job control turned off
315 Then you can play with the kernel inside the virtual serial console. You
316 can launch @code{ls} for example. Type @key{Ctrl-a h} to have an help
317 about the keys you can type inside the virtual serial console. In
318 particular, use @key{Ctrl-a x} to exit QEMU and use @key{Ctrl-a b} as
322 If the network is enabled, launch the script @file{/etc/linuxrc} in the
323 emulator (don't forget the leading dot):
328 Then enable X11 connections on your PC from the emulated Linux:
333 You can now launch @file{xterm} or @file{xlogo} and verify that you have
334 a real Virtual Linux system !
341 A 2.5.66 kernel is also included in the vl-test archive. Just
342 replace the bzImage in vl.sh to try it.
345 vl creates a temporary file in @var{$VLTMPDIR} (@file{/tmp} is the
346 default) containing all the simulated PC memory. If possible, try to use
347 a temporary directory using the tmpfs filesystem to avoid too many
348 unnecessary disk accesses.
351 The example initrd is a modified version of the one made by Kevin
352 Lawton for the plex86 Project (@url{www.plex86.org}).
359 usage: vl [options] bzImage [kernel parameters...]
362 @file{bzImage} is a Linux kernel image.
367 Use 'file' as initial ram disk.
371 Use 'file' as hard disk 0 or 1 image. The disk images are simply raw
372 images of the hard disk. You can create them with the command:
374 dd if=/dev/zero of=myimage bs=1024 count=mysize
376 where @var{myimage} is the image filename and @var{mysize} is its size
380 Set virtual RAM size to @var{megs} megabytes.
383 Set network init script [default=/etc/vl-ifup]. This script is
384 launched to configure the host network interface (usually tun0)
385 corresponding to the virtual NE2000 card.
391 Wait gdb connection to port 1234.
393 Change gdb connection port.
395 Output log in /tmp/vl.log
398 During emulation, use @key{C-a h} to get terminal commands:
406 Send break (magic sysrq)
411 @section Kernel Compilation
413 You can use any Linux kernel within QEMU provided it is mapped at
414 address 0x90000000 (the default is 0xc0000000). You must modify only two
415 lines in the kernel source:
417 In asm/page.h, replace
419 #define __PAGE_OFFSET (0xc0000000)
423 #define __PAGE_OFFSET (0x90000000)
426 And in arch/i386/vmlinux.lds, replace
428 . = 0xc0000000 + 0x100000;
432 . = 0x90000000 + 0x100000;
435 The file config-2.4.20 gives the configuration of the example kernel.
442 As you would do to make a real kernel. Then you can use with QEMU
443 exactly the same kernel as you would boot on your PC (in
444 @file{arch/i386/boot/bzImage}).
446 If you are not using a 2.5 kernel as host kernel but if you use a target
447 2.5 kernel, you must also ensure that the 'HZ' define is set to 100
448 (1000 is the default) as QEMU cannot currently emulate timers at
449 frequencies greater than 100 Hz on host Linux systems < 2.5. In
450 asm/param.h, replace:
453 # define HZ 1000 /* Internal kernel timer frequency */
457 # define HZ 100 /* Internal kernel timer frequency */
460 If you have problems running your kernel, verify that neither the SMP nor
461 HIGHMEM configuration options are activated.
463 @section PC Emulation
465 QEMU emulates the following PC peripherials:
469 PIC (interrupt controler)
475 Dumb VGA (to print the @code{Uncompressing Linux} message)
477 Serial port (port=0x3f8, irq=4)
479 NE2000 network adapter (port=0x300, irq=9)
481 IDE disk interface (port=0x1f0, irq=14)
486 QEMU has a primitive support to work with gdb, so that you can do
487 'Ctrl-C' while the kernel is running and inspect its state.
489 In order to use gdb, launch vl with the '-s' option. It will wait for a
492 > vl -s arch/i386/boot/bzImage initrd-2.4.20.img root=/dev/ram0 ramdisk_size=6144
493 Connected to host network interface: tun0
494 Waiting gdb connection on port 1234
497 Then launch gdb on the 'vmlinux' executable:
502 In gdb, connect to QEMU:
504 (gdb) target remote locahost:1234
507 Then you can use gdb normally. For example, type 'c' to launch the kernel:
512 WARNING: breakpoints and single stepping are not yet supported.
514 @chapter QEMU Internals
516 @section QEMU compared to other emulators
518 Like bochs [3], QEMU emulates an x86 CPU. But QEMU is much faster than
519 bochs as it uses dynamic compilation and because it uses the host MMU to
520 simulate the x86 MMU. The downside is that currently the emulation is
521 not as accurate as bochs (for example, you cannot currently run Windows
524 Like Valgrind [2], QEMU does user space emulation and dynamic
525 translation. Valgrind is mainly a memory debugger while QEMU has no
526 support for it (QEMU could be used to detect out of bound memory
527 accesses as Valgrind, but it has no support to track uninitialised data
528 as Valgrind does). The Valgrind dynamic translator generates better code
529 than QEMU (in particular it does register allocation) but it is closely
530 tied to an x86 host and target and has no support for precise exceptions
531 and system emulation.
533 EM86 [4] is the closest project to user space QEMU (and QEMU still uses
534 some of its code, in particular the ELF file loader). EM86 was limited
535 to an alpha host and used a proprietary and slow interpreter (the
536 interpreter part of the FX!32 Digital Win32 code translator [5]).
538 TWIN [6] is a Windows API emulator like Wine. It is less accurate than
539 Wine but includes a protected mode x86 interpreter to launch x86 Windows
540 executables. Such an approach as greater potential because most of the
541 Windows API is executed natively but it is far more difficult to develop
542 because all the data structures and function parameters exchanged
543 between the API and the x86 code must be converted.
545 User mode Linux [7] was the only solution before QEMU to launch a Linux
546 kernel as a process while not needing any host kernel patches. However,
547 user mode Linux requires heavy kernel patches while QEMU accepts
548 unpatched Linux kernels. It would be interesting to compare the
549 performance of the two approaches.
551 The new Plex86 [8] PC virtualizer is done in the same spirit as the QEMU
552 system emulator. It requires a patched Linux kernel to work (you cannot
553 launch the same kernel on your PC), but the patches are really small. As
554 it is a PC virtualizer (no emulation is done except for some priveledged
555 instructions), it has the potential of being faster than QEMU. The
556 downside is that a complicated (and potentially unsafe) host kernel
559 @section Portable dynamic translation
561 QEMU is a dynamic translator. When it first encounters a piece of code,
562 it converts it to the host instruction set. Usually dynamic translators
563 are very complicated and highly CPU dependent. QEMU uses some tricks
564 which make it relatively easily portable and simple while achieving good
567 The basic idea is to split every x86 instruction into fewer simpler
568 instructions. Each simple instruction is implemented by a piece of C
569 code (see @file{op-i386.c}). Then a compile time tool (@file{dyngen})
570 takes the corresponding object file (@file{op-i386.o}) to generate a
571 dynamic code generator which concatenates the simple instructions to
572 build a function (see @file{op-i386.h:dyngen_code()}).
574 In essence, the process is similar to [1], but more work is done at
577 A key idea to get optimal performances is that constant parameters can
578 be passed to the simple operations. For that purpose, dummy ELF
579 relocations are generated with gcc for each constant parameter. Then,
580 the tool (@file{dyngen}) can locate the relocations and generate the
581 appriopriate C code to resolve them when building the dynamic code.
583 That way, QEMU is no more difficult to port than a dynamic linker.
585 To go even faster, GCC static register variables are used to keep the
586 state of the virtual CPU.
588 @section Register allocation
590 Since QEMU uses fixed simple instructions, no efficient register
591 allocation can be done. However, because RISC CPUs have a lot of
592 register, most of the virtual CPU state can be put in registers without
593 doing complicated register allocation.
595 @section Condition code optimisations
597 Good CPU condition codes emulation (@code{EFLAGS} register on x86) is a
598 critical point to get good performances. QEMU uses lazy condition code
599 evaluation: instead of computing the condition codes after each x86
600 instruction, it just stores one operand (called @code{CC_SRC}), the
601 result (called @code{CC_DST}) and the type of operation (called
604 @code{CC_OP} is almost never explicitely set in the generated code
605 because it is known at translation time.
607 In order to increase performances, a backward pass is performed on the
608 generated simple instructions (see
609 @code{translate-i386.c:optimize_flags()}). When it can be proved that
610 the condition codes are not needed by the next instructions, no
611 condition codes are computed at all.
613 @section CPU state optimisations
615 The x86 CPU has many internal states which change the way it evaluates
616 instructions. In order to achieve a good speed, the translation phase
617 considers that some state information of the virtual x86 CPU cannot
618 change in it. For example, if the SS, DS and ES segments have a zero
619 base, then the translator does not even generate an addition for the
622 [The FPU stack pointer register is not handled that way yet].
624 @section Translation cache
626 A 2MByte cache holds the most recently used translations. For
627 simplicity, it is completely flushed when it is full. A translation unit
628 contains just a single basic block (a block of x86 instructions
629 terminated by a jump or by a virtual CPU state change which the
630 translator cannot deduce statically).
632 @section Direct block chaining
634 After each translated basic block is executed, QEMU uses the simulated
635 Program Counter (PC) and other cpu state informations (such as the CS
636 segment base value) to find the next basic block.
638 In order to accelerate the most common cases where the new simulated PC
639 is known, QEMU can patch a basic block so that it jumps directly to the
642 The most portable code uses an indirect jump. An indirect jump makes it
643 easier to make the jump target modification atomic. On some
644 architectures (such as PowerPC), the @code{JUMP} opcode is directly
645 patched so that the block chaining has no overhead.
647 @section Self-modifying code and translated code invalidation
649 Self-modifying code is a special challenge in x86 emulation because no
650 instruction cache invalidation is signaled by the application when code
653 When translated code is generated for a basic block, the corresponding
654 host page is write protected if it is not already read-only (with the
655 system call @code{mprotect()}). Then, if a write access is done to the
656 page, Linux raises a SEGV signal. QEMU then invalidates all the
657 translated code in the page and enables write accesses to the page.
659 Correct translated code invalidation is done efficiently by maintaining
660 a linked list of every translated block contained in a given page. Other
661 linked lists are also maintained to undo direct block chaining.
663 Althought the overhead of doing @code{mprotect()} calls is important,
664 most MSDOS programs can be emulated at reasonnable speed with QEMU and
667 Note that QEMU also invalidates pages of translated code when it detects
668 that memory mappings are modified with @code{mmap()} or @code{munmap()}.
670 @section Exception support
672 longjmp() is used when an exception such as division by zero is
675 The host SIGSEGV and SIGBUS signal handlers are used to get invalid
676 memory accesses. The exact CPU state can be retrieved because all the
677 x86 registers are stored in fixed host registers. The simulated program
678 counter is found by retranslating the corresponding basic block and by
679 looking where the host program counter was at the exception point.
681 The virtual CPU cannot retrieve the exact @code{EFLAGS} register because
682 in some cases it is not computed because of condition code
683 optimisations. It is not a big concern because the emulated code can
684 still be restarted in any cases.
686 @section Linux system call translation
688 QEMU includes a generic system call translator for Linux. It means that
689 the parameters of the system calls can be converted to fix the
690 endianness and 32/64 bit issues. The IOCTLs are converted with a generic
691 type description system (see @file{ioctls.h} and @file{thunk.c}).
693 QEMU supports host CPUs which have pages bigger than 4KB. It records all
694 the mappings the process does and try to emulated the @code{mmap()}
695 system calls in cases where the host @code{mmap()} call would fail
696 because of bad page alignment.
698 @section Linux signals
700 Normal and real-time signals are queued along with their information
701 (@code{siginfo_t}) as it is done in the Linux kernel. Then an interrupt
702 request is done to the virtual CPU. When it is interrupted, one queued
703 signal is handled by generating a stack frame in the virtual CPU as the
704 Linux kernel does. The @code{sigreturn()} system call is emulated to return
705 from the virtual signal handler.
707 Some signals (such as SIGALRM) directly come from the host. Other
708 signals are synthetized from the virtual CPU exceptions such as SIGFPE
709 when a division by zero is done (see @code{main.c:cpu_loop()}).
711 The blocked signal mask is still handled by the host Linux kernel so
712 that most signal system calls can be redirected directly to the host
713 Linux kernel. Only the @code{sigaction()} and @code{sigreturn()} system
714 calls need to be fully emulated (see @file{signal.c}).
716 @section clone() system call and threads
718 The Linux clone() system call is usually used to create a thread. QEMU
719 uses the host clone() system call so that real host threads are created
720 for each emulated thread. One virtual CPU instance is created for each
723 The virtual x86 CPU atomic operations are emulated with a global lock so
724 that their semantic is preserved.
726 Note that currently there are still some locking issues in QEMU. In
727 particular, the translated cache flush is not protected yet against
730 @section Self-virtualization
732 QEMU was conceived so that ultimately it can emulate itself. Althought
733 it is not very useful, it is an important test to show the power of the
736 Achieving self-virtualization is not easy because there may be address
737 space conflicts. QEMU solves this problem by being an executable ELF
738 shared object as the ld-linux.so ELF interpreter. That way, it can be
739 relocated at load time.
741 @section MMU emulation
743 For system emulation, QEMU uses the mmap() system call to emulate the
744 target CPU MMU. It works as long the emulated OS does not use an area
745 reserved by the host OS (such as the area above 0xc0000000 on x86
748 It is planned to add a slower but more precise MMU emulation
751 @section Bibliography
756 @url{http://citeseer.nj.nec.com/piumarta98optimizing.html}, Optimizing
757 direct threaded code by selective inlining (1998) by Ian Piumarta, Fabio
761 @url{http://developer.kde.org/~sewardj/}, Valgrind, an open-source
762 memory debugger for x86-GNU/Linux, by Julian Seward.
765 @url{http://bochs.sourceforge.net/}, the Bochs IA-32 Emulator Project,
766 by Kevin Lawton et al.
769 @url{http://www.cs.rose-hulman.edu/~donaldlf/em86/index.html}, the EM86
770 x86 emulator on Alpha-Linux.
773 @url{http://www.usenix.org/publications/library/proceedings/usenix-nt97/full_papers/chernoff/chernoff.pdf},
774 DIGITAL FX!32: Running 32-Bit x86 Applications on Alpha NT, by Anton
775 Chernoff and Ray Hookway.
778 @url{http://www.willows.com/}, Windows API library emulation from
782 @url{http://user-mode-linux.sourceforge.net/},
783 The User-mode Linux Kernel.
786 @url{http://www.plex86.org/},
787 The new Plex86 project.
791 @chapter Regression Tests
793 In the directory @file{tests/}, various interesting testing programs
794 are available. There are used for regression testing.
796 @section @file{hello-i386}
798 Very simple statically linked x86 program, just to test QEMU during a
799 port to a new host CPU.
801 @section @file{hello-arm}
803 Very simple statically linked ARM program, just to test QEMU during a
804 port to a new host CPU.
806 @section @file{test-i386}
808 This program executes most of the 16 bit and 32 bit x86 instructions and
809 generates a text output. It can be compared with the output obtained with
810 a real CPU or another emulator. The target @code{make test} runs this
811 program and a @code{diff} on the generated output.
813 The Linux system call @code{modify_ldt()} is used to create x86 selectors
814 to test some 16 bit addressing and 32 bit with segmentation cases.
816 The Linux system call @code{vm86()} is used to test vm86 emulation.
818 Various exceptions are raised to test most of the x86 user space
823 It is a simple benchmark. Care must be taken to interpret the results
824 because it mostly tests the ability of the virtual CPU to optimize the
825 @code{rol} x86 instruction and the condition code computations.