A-profile CPU architecture support

QEMU’s TCG emulation includes support for the Armv5, Armv6, Armv7, Armv8 and Armv9 versions of the A-profile architecture. It also has support for the following architecture extensions:

  • FEAT_AA32BF16 (AArch32 BFloat16 instructions)

  • FEAT_AA32EL0 (Support for AArch32 at EL0)

  • FEAT_AA32EL1 (Support for AArch32 at EL1)

  • FEAT_AA32EL2 (Support for AArch32 at EL2)

  • FEAT_AA32EL3 (Support for AArch32 at EL3)

  • FEAT_AA32HPD (AArch32 hierarchical permission disables)

  • FEAT_AA32I8MM (AArch32 Int8 matrix multiplication instructions)

  • FEAT_AA64EL0 (Support for AArch64 at EL0)

  • FEAT_AA64EL1 (Support for AArch64 at EL1)

  • FEAT_AA64EL2 (Support for AArch64 at EL2)

  • FEAT_AA64EL3 (Support for AArch64 at EL3)

  • FEAT_AdvSIMD (Advanced SIMD Extension)

  • FEAT_AES (AESD and AESE instructions)

  • FEAT_Armv9_Crypto (Armv9 Cryptographic Extension)

  • FEAT_ASID16 (16 bit ASID)

  • FEAT_BBM at level 2 (Translation table break-before-make levels)

  • FEAT_BF16 (AArch64 BFloat16 instructions)

  • FEAT_BTI (Branch Target Identification)

  • FEAT_CCIDX (Extended cache index)

  • FEAT_CMOW (Control for cache maintenance permission)

  • FEAT_CRC32 (CRC32 instructions)

  • FEAT_Crypto (Cryptographic Extension)

  • FEAT_CSV2 (Cache speculation variant 2)

  • FEAT_CSV2_1p1 (Cache speculation variant 2, version 1.1)

  • FEAT_CSV2_1p2 (Cache speculation variant 2, version 1.2)

  • FEAT_CSV2_2 (Cache speculation variant 2, version 2)

  • FEAT_CSV2_3 (Cache speculation variant 2, version 3)

  • FEAT_CSV3 (Cache speculation variant 3)

  • FEAT_DGH (Data gathering hint)

  • FEAT_DIT (Data Independent Timing instructions)

  • FEAT_DoubleLock (Double Lock)

  • FEAT_DPB (DC CVAP instruction)

  • FEAT_DPB2 (DC CVADP instruction)

  • FEAT_Debugv8p1 (Debug with VHE)

  • FEAT_Debugv8p2 (Debug changes for v8.2)

  • FEAT_Debugv8p4 (Debug changes for v8.4)

  • FEAT_Debugv8p8 (Debug changes for v8.8)

  • FEAT_DotProd (Advanced SIMD dot product instructions)

  • FEAT_DoubleFault (Double Fault Extension)

  • FEAT_E0PD (Preventing EL0 access to halves of address maps)

  • FEAT_EBF16 (AArch64 Extended BFloat16 instructions)

  • FEAT_ECV (Enhanced Counter Virtualization)

  • FEAT_EL0 (Support for execution at EL0)

  • FEAT_EL1 (Support for execution at EL1)

  • FEAT_EL2 (Support for execution at EL2)

  • FEAT_EL3 (Support for execution at EL3)

  • FEAT_EPAC (Enhanced pointer authentication)

  • FEAT_ETS2 (Enhanced Translation Synchronization)

  • FEAT_EVT (Enhanced Virtualization Traps)

  • FEAT_F32MM (Single-precision Matrix Multiplication)

  • FEAT_F64MM (Double-precision Matrix Multiplication)

  • FEAT_FCMA (Floating-point complex number instructions)

  • FEAT_FGT (Fine-Grained Traps)

  • FEAT_FHM (Floating-point half-precision multiplication instructions)

  • FEAT_FP (Floating Point extensions)

  • FEAT_FP16 (Half-precision floating-point data processing)

  • FEAT_FPAC (Faulting on AUT* instructions)

  • FEAT_FPACCOMBINE (Faulting on combined pointer authentication instructions)

  • FEAT_FPACC_SPEC (Speculative behavior of combined pointer authentication instructions)

  • FEAT_FRINTTS (Floating-point to integer instructions)

  • FEAT_FlagM (Flag manipulation instructions v2)

  • FEAT_FlagM2 (Enhancements to flag manipulation instructions)

  • FEAT_GTG (Guest translation granule size)

  • FEAT_HAFDBS (Hardware management of the access flag and dirty bit state)

  • FEAT_HBC (Hinted conditional branches)

  • FEAT_HCX (Support for the HCRX_EL2 register)

  • FEAT_HPDS (Hierarchical permission disables)

  • FEAT_HPDS2 (Translation table page-based hardware attributes)

  • FEAT_HPMN0 (Setting of MDCR_EL2.HPMN to zero)

  • FEAT_I8MM (AArch64 Int8 matrix multiplication instructions)

  • FEAT_IDST (ID space trap handling)

  • FEAT_IESB (Implicit error synchronization event)

  • FEAT_JSCVT (JavaScript conversion instructions)

  • FEAT_LOR (Limited ordering regions)

  • FEAT_LPA (Large Physical Address space)

  • FEAT_LPA2 (Large Physical and virtual Address space v2)

  • FEAT_LRCPC (Load-acquire RCpc instructions)

  • FEAT_LRCPC2 (Load-acquire RCpc instructions v2)

  • FEAT_LSE (Large System Extensions)

  • FEAT_LSE2 (Large System Extensions v2)

  • FEAT_LVA (Large Virtual Address space)

  • FEAT_MixedEnd (Mixed-endian support)

  • FEAT_MixedEndEL0 (Mixed-endian support at EL0)

  • FEAT_MOPS (Standardization of memory operations)

  • FEAT_MTE (Memory Tagging Extension)

  • FEAT_MTE2 (Memory Tagging Extension)

  • FEAT_MTE3 (MTE Asymmetric Fault Handling)

  • FEAT_MTE_ASYM_FAULT (Memory tagging asymmetric faults)

  • FEAT_MTE_ASYNC (Asynchronous reporting of Tag Check Fault)

  • FEAT_NMI (Non-maskable Interrupt)

  • FEAT_NV (Nested Virtualization)

  • FEAT_NV2 (Enhanced nested virtualization support)

  • FEAT_PACIMP (Pointer authentication - IMPLEMENTATION DEFINED algorithm)

  • FEAT_PACQARMA3 (Pointer authentication - QARMA3 algorithm)

  • FEAT_PACQARMA5 (Pointer authentication - QARMA5 algorithm)

  • FEAT_PAN (Privileged access never)

  • FEAT_PAN2 (AT S1E1R and AT S1E1W instruction variants affected by PSTATE.PAN)

  • FEAT_PAN3 (Support for SCTLR_ELx.EPAN)

  • FEAT_PAuth (Pointer authentication)

  • FEAT_PAuth2 (Enhancements to pointer authentication)

  • FEAT_PMULL (PMULL, PMULL2 instructions)

  • FEAT_PMUv3 (PMU extension version 3)

  • FEAT_PMUv3p1 (PMU Extensions v3.1)

  • FEAT_PMUv3p4 (PMU Extensions v3.4)

  • FEAT_PMUv3p5 (PMU Extensions v3.5)

  • FEAT_RAS (Reliability, availability, and serviceability)

  • FEAT_RASv1p1 (RAS Extension v1.1)

  • FEAT_RDM (Advanced SIMD rounding double multiply accumulate instructions)

  • FEAT_RME (Realm Management Extension) (NB: support status in QEMU is experimental)

  • FEAT_RNG (Random number generator)

  • FEAT_S2FWB (Stage 2 forced Write-Back)

  • FEAT_SB (Speculation Barrier)

  • FEAT_SEL2 (Secure EL2)

  • FEAT_SHA1 (SHA1 instructions)

  • FEAT_SHA256 (SHA256 instructions)

  • FEAT_SHA3 (Advanced SIMD SHA3 instructions)

  • FEAT_SHA512 (Advanced SIMD SHA512 instructions)

  • FEAT_SM3 (Advanced SIMD SM3 instructions)

  • FEAT_SM4 (Advanced SIMD SM4 instructions)

  • FEAT_SME (Scalable Matrix Extension)

  • FEAT_SME_FA64 (Full A64 instruction set in Streaming SVE mode)

  • FEAT_SME_F64F64 (Double-precision floating-point outer product instructions)

  • FEAT_SME_I16I64 (16-bit to 64-bit integer widening outer product instructions)

  • FEAT_SVE (Scalable Vector Extension)

  • FEAT_SVE_AES (Scalable Vector AES instructions)

  • FEAT_SVE_BitPerm (Scalable Vector Bit Permutes instructions)

  • FEAT_SVE_PMULL128 (Scalable Vector PMULL instructions)

  • FEAT_SVE_SHA3 (Scalable Vector SHA3 instructions)

  • FEAT_SVE_SM4 (Scalable Vector SM4 instructions)

  • FEAT_SVE2 (Scalable Vector Extension version 2)

  • FEAT_SPECRES (Speculation restriction instructions)

  • FEAT_SSBS (Speculative Store Bypass Safe)

  • FEAT_SSBS2 (MRS and MSR instructions for SSBS version 2)

  • FEAT_TGran16K (Support for 16KB memory translation granule size at stage 1)

  • FEAT_TGran4K (Support for 4KB memory translation granule size at stage 1)

  • FEAT_TGran64K (Support for 64KB memory translation granule size at stage 1)

  • FEAT_TIDCP1 (EL0 use of IMPLEMENTATION DEFINED functionality)

  • FEAT_TLBIOS (TLB invalidate instructions in Outer Shareable domain)

  • FEAT_TLBIRANGE (TLB invalidate range instructions)

  • FEAT_TTCNP (Translation table Common not private translations)

  • FEAT_TTL (Translation Table Level)

  • FEAT_TTST (Small translation tables)

  • FEAT_UAO (Unprivileged Access Override control)

  • FEAT_VHE (Virtualization Host Extensions)

  • FEAT_VMID16 (16-bit VMID)

  • FEAT_WFxT (WFE and WFI instructions with timeout)

  • FEAT_XNX (Translation table stage 2 Unprivileged Execute-never)

  • FEAT_XS (XS attribute)

For information on the specifics of these extensions, please refer to the Arm Architecture Reference Manual for A-profile architecture.

When a specific named CPU is being emulated, only those features which are present in hardware for that CPU are emulated. (If a feature is not in the list above then it is not supported, even if the real hardware should have it.) The max CPU enables all features.

R-profile CPU architecture support

QEMU’s TCG emulation support for R-profile CPUs is currently limited. We emulate only the Cortex-R5 and Cortex-R5F CPUs.

M-profile CPU architecture support

QEMU’s TCG emulation includes support for Armv6-M, Armv7-M, Armv8-M, and Armv8.1-M versions of the M-profile architucture. It also has support for the following architecture extensions:

  • FP (Floating-point Extension)

  • FPCXT (FPCXT access instructions)

  • HP (Half-precision floating-point instructions)

  • LOB (Low Overhead loops and Branch future)

  • M (Main Extension)

  • MPU (Memory Protection Unit Extension)

  • PXN (Privileged Execute Never)

  • RAS (Reliability, Serviceability and Availability): “minimum RAS Extension” only

  • S (Security Extension)

  • ST (System Timer Extension)

For information on the specifics of these extensions, please refer to the Armv8-M Arm Architecture Reference Manual.

When a specific named CPU is being emulated, only those features which are present in hardware for that CPU are emulated. (If a feature is not in the list above then it is not supported, even if the real hardware should have it.) There is no equivalent of the max CPU for M-profile.