aboutsummaryrefslogtreecommitdiff
path: root/qemu-doc.texi
diff options
context:
space:
mode:
authorPaolo Bonzini <pbonzini@redhat.com>2016-10-06 15:22:05 +0200
committerPaolo Bonzini <pbonzini@redhat.com>2016-10-07 10:05:25 +0200
commit0722cc42d472c64edb28cfdee04be815a3c1c7fa (patch)
treefb65e2a7fb23a79615fc2d69b94ee0c847bb15a9 /qemu-doc.texi
parentc3ce5a235741cb027b1328288ddec06470254813 (diff)
qemu-tech: move user mode emulation features from qemu-tech
These are interesting for users too, since nowadays most qemu-user users are going to be somewhat technical rather than just people that want to run Wine. Some detail is lost, on the other hand some of the information I removed (e.g. basic block unchaining) was obsolete. Reviewed-by: Emilio G. Cota <cota@braap.org> Signed-off-by: Paolo Bonzini <pbonzini@redhat.com>
Diffstat (limited to 'qemu-doc.texi')
-rw-r--r--qemu-doc.texi34
1 files changed, 34 insertions, 0 deletions
diff --git a/qemu-doc.texi b/qemu-doc.texi
index e60c46b5c9..227c2b0b45 100644
--- a/qemu-doc.texi
+++ b/qemu-doc.texi
@@ -2629,6 +2629,7 @@ so should only be used with trusted guest OS.
@menu
* Supported Operating Systems ::
+* Features::
* Linux User space emulator::
* BSD User space emulator ::
@end menu
@@ -2645,6 +2646,39 @@ Linux (referred as qemu-linux-user)
BSD (referred as qemu-bsd-user)
@end itemize
+@node Features
+@section Features
+
+QEMU user space emulation has the following notable features:
+
+@table @strong
+@item System call translation:
+QEMU includes a generic system call translator. This means that
+the parameters of the system calls can be converted to fix
+endianness and 32/64-bit mismatches between hosts and targets.
+IOCTLs can be converted too.
+
+@item POSIX signal handling:
+QEMU can redirect to the running program all signals coming from
+the host (such as @code{SIGALRM}), as well as synthesize signals from
+virtual CPU exceptions (for example @code{SIGFPE} when the program
+executes a division by zero).
+
+QEMU relies on the host kernel to emulate most signal system
+calls, for example to emulate the signal mask. On Linux, QEMU
+supports both normal and real-time signals.
+
+@item Threading:
+On Linux, QEMU can emulate the @code{clone} syscall and create a real
+host thread (with a separate virtual CPU) for each emulated thread.
+Note that not all targets currently emulate atomic operations correctly.
+x86 and ARM use a global lock in order to preserve their semantics.
+@end table
+
+QEMU was conceived so that ultimately it can emulate itself. Although
+it is not very useful, it is an important test to show the power of the
+emulator.
+
@node Linux User space emulator
@section Linux User space emulator