Virtualization News Archives

QEMU 10.1 was released overnight as the latest iteration of this open-source machine emulator that plays an important role in the Linux virtualization stack.

Some old and unmaintained drivers for Linux's Virtual Function I/O (VFIO) support are being marked as deprecated for eventual removal, including the generic VFIO platform driver.

The KVM feature changes were merged a few days ago with all of their enhancements for the in-development Linux 6.17 kernel. Some nice improvements made it this cycle for enhancing the open-source Linux virtualization stack.

There are a few AMD Secure Encrypted Virtualization improvements on the way for the Linux 6.17 kernel worth noting.

For those making use of Open Virtual Machine Firmware (OVMF) such as for UEFI booting of VMs with KVM+QEMU, the upcoming Linux 6.17 kernel is set to offer a convenient new driver to help in debugging the system boot when needed.

Cloud Hypervisor is the open-source, Rust-based VMM started originally by Intel engineers but under the stewardship of the Linux Foundation has evolved into a nice multi-vendor initiative with the likes of Microsoft, Cyberus, Arm, and others all contributing. Even with Intel's cutbacks due to their ongoing corporate restructuring, the Cloud Hypervisor project is thriving as a multi-vendor open-source project for a security-focused hypervisor.

In addition to releasing Oracle Linux 10 today, Oracle also released the second beta of the upcoming VirtualBox 7.2 cross-platform virtualization software.

Merged minutes ago ahead of the Linux 6.16-rc3 release due out shortly was this week's batch of Kernel-based Virtual Machine (KVM) updates. Beyond the usual KVM fixes merged for the week, a bit of feature code was pulled in by Linus Torvalds for this post-merge-window phase.

Following the Intel TDX host support for KVM being merged for the Linux 6.16 merge window, another batch of Kernel-based Virtual Machine (KVM) changes were merged for the ongoing Linux 6.16 merge window.

While the open-source, Rust-based Cloud Hypervisor project was started by Intel as a modern VMM for cloud workloads and focused on security, some Intel CPU features are now bit-rotting. In turn the new Cloud Hypervisor 46 release has deprecated support for Intel Software Guard Extensions (SGX) while even their modern Trust Domain Extensions (TDX) feature is in jeopardy but now with Google engineers set to takeover that code.

The QEMU processor emulator that plays an important role in the open-source Linux virtualization stack has been seeing experimental support for the Rust programming language developing within its codebase. There continues to be good progress being made on this Rust support as more QEMU components get ported over to this programming language for memory safety and other security benefits.

One of the biggest surprises of last year was finding out that VMware has been working on shifting VMware Workstation from proprietary code to building atop the upstream KVM code within the Linux kernel. Following the initial patches from last October, an updated patch series was sent out on the Linux kernel mailing list yesterday for working on this transition.

QEMU 10.0 was released today as the newest version of this emulator code that plays an important role in the open-source Linux virtualization stack.

While the Linux 6.15 merge window ended just one week ago and there is a month and a half until it will debut as stable, a notable feature has already been queued into a "next" branch for the follow-on Linux 6.16 cycle. For those making use of modern Intel Xeon processors with virtualization, the Trust Domain Extensions (TDX) support for KVM virtualization looks like it will finally be mainlined.

The Linux 6.16 kernel this summer will likely see the new SNP SVSM vTPM driver introduced for further enhancing the AMD EPYC confidential computing capabilities atop the mainline Linux kernel.

This morning's Intel TDX update reminded me that I still hadn't gotten around to digging into the Kernel-based Virtual Machine (KVM) changes merged last week for the ongoing Linux 6.15 kernel merge window. Here is a look at the KVM changes this cycle that continue to be particularly heavy on Intel and AMD virtualization improvements.

Mesa's Venus driver that allows for 3D graphics acceleration within virtual machines is now able to make use of the Vulkan ray-tracing extensions when using Mesa 25.1-devel along with updated Venus Protocol and Virglrenderer code.

The Xen Project announced the availability today of the Xen 4.20 virtualization hypervisor.

MatterV 0.7 is out today as the newest feature release to this open-source virtual machine management platform built atop KVM. MatterV aims to make it easy to manage VMs across different environments while with today's v0.7 release adds the ability to run unmodified VMware virtual machines atop KVM.

The Linux Foundation by way of their LF Energy initiative announced today the release of SEAPATH 1.0, a security-hardened real-time hypervisor.

Cloud Hypervisor 44 is now available as the newest version of this security and cloud minded Virtual Machine Monitor (VMM) that operates atop Linux's KVM and the Microsoft MSHV Hypervisor.

Along with other Intel TDX changes and AMD SEV updates separately sent out for thei n-development Linux 6.14 kernel, there is the usual hearty batch of Kernel-based Virtual Machine (KVM) virtualization updates too.

The Linux 6.14 kernel will enable the VirtualBox guest drivers to be built for ARM64 Linux virtual machines (VMs).

Libvirt 11.0 was christened today as the newest version of this open-source Virtualization API for managing VMs on Linux and other platforms while supporting KVM, QEMU, Xen, VMware ESX, LXC, Bhyve, and other hypervisors.

Cloud Hypervisor 43 is out as the newest version of this Intel-backed, Rust-based open-source VMM project that now routinely sees contributions from Microsoft, Arm, Rivos, Tencent, and other organizations.

Merged today to the Linux kernel are fixes for two vulnerabilities with the Xen hypervisor. One of them concerns a malicious network backend being able to crash a guest after a suspend/resume cycle of a Linux guest. The other more pressing issue addressed is a Xen hypercall page being unsafe against speculative CPU attacks.

Earlier this month as part of patches for cleaning up x86 32-bit kernel code for x86_64 systems, there was a patch to drop support for 32-bit x86 KVM host support. That patch has now been split off into its own patch series with also now raising the prospects of ending 32-bit KVM host support across all CPU architectures rather than being just an x86-only change.

QEMU 9.2 is out today for this processor emulator that plays an important role within the open-source Linux virtualization stack.

The Rust Hypervisor Firmware is a project out of the Cloud Hypervisor umbrella for developing open-source, Rust-based firmware that can be launched from any environment able to load ELF binaries and run them via the PVH booting standard. Rust Hypervisor Firmware v0.5 is out this weekend with the newest capabilities.

The KVM changes were merged yesterday for Linux 6.13 in further enhancing the open-source virtualization stack.

Earlier this week was the main power management updates for Linux 6.13 that included switching AMD EPYC Turin to using the amd_pstate driver on supported systems. Sent out this weekend was another set of power management updates that also includes a notable addition: the virtual CPUFreq driver.

IBM isn't formally releasing Power11 processors until next year, but their software engineers continue being quite busy preparing the Linux kernel and other open-source software for Power11. The newest on the kernel side is enabling support for KVM nested guests on IBM Power11 platforms.

DXVK 2.5 was just released as the newest version of this open-source project implementing Direct3D APIs atop the Vulkan API for better handling of Windows games on Linux systems as used by Valve's Steam Play (Proton) software.

This isn't an off-schedule April Fools' Joke or anything like that but an exciting sign of the times: VMware Workstation will be shifting off its proprietary base and onto leveraging the upstream Linux Kernel-based Virtual Machine (KVM) for virtualization needs moving forward.

Support for making use of Vulkan with VirtIO-GPU while using QEMU could very soon be upstream.

Cloud Hypervisor 42.0 is out as the newest update of this open-source, Rust-based hypervisor that began as an Intel software project but is now developed by a number of different organizations from Arm to Microsoft.

Qualcomm engineers have developed VCL as a new open-source OpenCL driver for use with VirtIO-GPU for providing OpenCL hardware acceleration within virtual machines.

The KVM x86/x86_64 changes were merged today as we are nearly done with the Linux 6.12 merge window.

The VirtIO Vsock guest/host communication interface using virtual sockets will see better performance with the in-development Linux 6.12 kernel.

Red Hat engineer Paolo Bonzini submitted the initial batch of KVM changes targeting the Linux 6.12 kernel. This is just the first batch and notably lacking all of the KVM x86 Intel/AMD changes for the cycle. But in the non-x86 space there is a fair amount of activity for this next kernel version for those making use of KVM as part of the open-source virtualization stack.

The LoongArch changes for the Kernel-based Virtual Machine (KVM) have been submitted ahead of the Linux 6.12 merge window opening. For enhancing KVM virtualization on these Chinese CPUs is enabling Loongson Binary Translation (LBT) for accelerating ARM/x86 binary translation.

Oracle today released version 7.1 of their VirtualBox virtualization software with an improved GUI, Wayland clipboard sharing support, OCI integration improvements, and other enhancements.

QEMU 9.1 is out in stable form today as the newest feature release to this open-source processor emulator that plays a vital role within the free software Linux virtualization stack.

The Bochs Direct Rendering Manager (DRM) kernel driver is in the process of being modernized. The Bochs driver is important in that it's commonly used for virtual VGA output with QEMU for Linux virtualization.

Released last month was the VirtualBox 7.1 Beta 1 virtualization software release from Oracle. This new version is bringing a modernized GUI, Wayland clipboard sharing, and other improvements. Released yesterday was the second beta of this big VirtualBox update.

The Cloud Hypervisor open-source project that serves as a Rust-written VMM focused on security and started by Intel but now backed by a multitude of vendors is out with its newest feature release. Cloud Hypervisor 41 is the new feature release worked on by engineers at Intel, Google, Microsoft, Rivos, Tencent, Ant Group, and others for this cloud and security minded virtual machine monitor.

The Xen Project has announced version Xen 4.19 of this open-source hypervisor that is rolling out security improvements, performance and scalability enhancements, and other refinements to this cross-architecture option for open-source virtualization.

Oracle today released the first public beta of their VirtualBox 7.1 virtualization software.

When it comes to virtualization with the Linux 6.11 kernel, in addition to the latest AMD SEV-SNP code making it upstream, for those making use of VMware virtualization products their initial "VMware Hypercall" API has been merged.

The Kernel-based Virtual Machine (KVM) updates for Linux 6.11 have been merged and it's a very exciting one for AMD EPYC servers with SEV-SNP guest VM support finally being in the mainline kernel.