Emulation fans, rejoice! Version 4 of open-source emulator QEMU has dropped with features aplenty and, sadly, one or two omissions.
First the bad news – x86 Memory Protection Extensions (MPX) support has been dropped from all CPU modes. The QEMU team is blunt in its reasoning, declaring the tech a “failed experiment by Intel” in the changelog. The gang has also dropped the “pc-0.10” and “pc-0.11” machine types, urging users to switch to something a bit newer instead.
However, while the QEMU team will cheerfully take away stuff that other teams have already disposed of (x86 MPX support has already been yanked from the Linux kernel) there is plenty in the new release to keep the faithful happy.
Not to be left out, additional support for MIPS machines arrives along with enhancements for PowerPC, including Spectre and Meltdown mitigations enabled by default for the pSeries. The default pSeries CPU is now the POWER9. For RISC-V, the virt board now supports PCI and USB.
To read more, please visit: https://www.theregister.co.uk/2019/04/25/qemu_4/.