QEMU 4.2 Cycle Kicks Off With Inaugural Release Candidate

The initial release candidate for the upcoming QEMU 4.2 is now available as a sizable update to this important piece of the open-source Linux virtualization stack.

Among the changes on deck for QEMU 4.2 include:

- Better performance for Tiny Code Generator (TCG) emulation of ARM cores.

- Another QEMU 2.4 performance improvement can come with recent Gcrypt and Nettle libraries where QEMU can now use the library's own XTS cipher mode and that can result in a big performance boost for AES-XTS encryption particularly if using LUKS disk encryption when running under QEMU.

- The LUKS block driver now supports falloc/full pre-allocation.

- Support for QEMU on ARM to run with more than 256 CPUs.

- ASpeed AST2600 model support.

There is much more via the work-in-progress change-log. At least three more release candidates are expected over the coming weeks while ideally releasing QEMU 4.2.0 around 3~10 December. The current stable and development releases are available from QEMU.org.