KVM Forum 2025

Single-binary: Unify QEMU system binaries per target architecture
2025-09-04 , Room 2

QEMU has been historically designed for having a different binary for 
each target. Nowadays, with the advent of heterogeneous systems, it has 
become a barrier to be able to emulate those. As a first step, we have 
been working on the QEMU architecture to be able to build multiple
targets together in the same binary. This is what we call the ‘single binary’.

In this presentation, we'll introduce the approach we chose and the 
challenges we met on the road, from the build system to target code, 
going through a wide range of QEMU subsystems. Finally, we'll give you a 
status of this project, and what will be our next steps.

Pierrick works on QEMU at Linaro, focusing on Arm architecture and TCG plugins.