I understand that qemu uses binary translation to emulate machines, so irrespective of the underlying architecture, it can provide emulation.
And, KVM uses Hardware Virtualization technique to make this process faster. Thus, KVM requires VT support from underlying architectures (which x86 processor provides).
I have emulated powerpc architecture with qemu over x86 architecture. My question is whether it is possible to run KVM over this powerpc architecture. We can implement nested virtualization by using software virtualization over hardware virtualization(qemu over kvm) but is this true for the reverse case(kvm over qemu). Any explanation in the answers would be quite helpful.
Thanks
Best Answer
KVM uses the hardware virtualization instructions found in recent x86 chips. Qemu, when emulating an x86 CPU lets the user pick some of the emulated chip options. So, the question boils to "does the qemu emulated x86 include the virtualization instructions?".
There's some (still experimental) work in the KVM groups to emulate the virtualization instructions so that you can run KVM over KVM. I don't know if that work is ported to qemu, or if there's a parallel effort. In any case, it's likely to be experimental too.
To find out exactly what CPU capabilities can your specific qemu build emulate, just run