QEMU Emulation for X86

Board Overview

Name:

qemu_x86

Vendor:

Intel Corporation

Status:

Not actively maintained

Architecture:

x86

SoC:

atom

Browse board sources

Overview

The X86 QEMU board configuration is used to emulate the X86 architecture.

This board configuration provides support for an x86 Minute IA (Lakemont) CPU and the following devices:

• HPET

• Advanced Programmable Interrupt Controller (APIC)

• NS16550 UART

Hardware

Supported Features

The qemu_x86 board supports the hardware features listed below.

on-chip / on-board

Feature integrated in the SoC / present on the board.

2 / 2

Number of instances that are enabled / disabled.
Click on the label to see the first instance of this feature in the board/SoC DTS files.

vnd,foo

Compatible string for the Devicetree binding matching the feature.
Click on the link to view the binding documentation.

qemu_x86/atom target

Type	Location	Description	Compatible
CPU	on-chip	Generic x86 qemu CPU1	intel,x86
CAN	on-board	Kvaser PCIcan1	kvaser,pcican
Ethernet	on-board	Intel E1000 Ethernet controller1	intel,e1000
Interrupt controller	on-chip	Intel I/O Advanced Programmable Interrupt Controller (APIC)1	intel,ioapic
	on-chip	Local Advanced Programmable Interrupt Controller (APIC)1	intel,loapic
Multi-Function Device	on-chip	Motorola MC146818 MFD1	motorola,mc146818-mfd
MTD	on-board	Flash node2	soc-nv-flash
	on-board	Fixed partitions of a flash (or other non-volatile storage) memory1	fixed-partitions
PCIe	on-board	Generic PCIe host controller1	pcie-controller
RTC	on-chip	Motorola MC146818 compatible Real Timer Clock1	motorola,mc146818
Serial controller	on-chip	ns16550 UART2	ns16550
Timer	on-chip	HPET (High-Precision Event Timer)1	intel,hpet

Devices

HPET System Clock Support

The configuration uses an HPET clock frequency of 25 MHz.

Serial Port

The board configuration uses a single serial communication channel that uses the NS16550 serial driver operating in polling mode. To override, enable the UART_INTERRUPT_DRIVEN Kconfig option, which allows the system to be interrupt-driven.

If SLIP networking is enabled (see below), an additional serial port will be used for it.

Known Problems or Limitations

The following platform features are unsupported:

• Isolated Memory Regions

• Serial port in Direct Memory Access (DMA) mode

• Serial Peripheral Interface (SPI) flash

• General-Purpose Input/Output (GPIO)

• Inter-Integrated Circuit (I2C)

• Ethernet

• Supervisor Mode Execution Protection (SMEP)

Programming and Debugging

The qemu_x86 board supports the runners and associated west commands listed below.

	flash	debug

Applications for the qemu_x86 board configuration can be built and run in the usual way for emulated boards (see Building an Application and Run an Application for more details).

Flashing

While this board is emulated and you can’t “flash” it, you can use this configuration to run basic Zephyr applications and kernel tests in the QEMU emulated environment. For example, with the Basic Synchronization sample:

# From the root of the zephyr repository
west build -b qemu_x86 samples/synchronization
west build -t run

This will build an image with the synchronization sample app, boot it using QEMU, and display the following console output:

***** BOOTING ZEPHYR OS v1.8.99 - BUILD: Jun 27 2017 13:09:26 *****
threadA: Hello World from x86!
threadB: Hello World from x86!
threadA: Hello World from x86!
threadB: Hello World from x86!
threadA: Hello World from x86!
threadB: Hello World from x86!
threadA: Hello World from x86!
threadB: Hello World from x86!
threadA: Hello World from x86!
threadB: Hello World from x86!

Exit QEMU by pressing CTRL+A x.

For qemu_x86_64 platform, it also supports to use UEFI bootable method to run Zephyr applications and kernel tests, but you need to set up some environment configurations as follows:

• Please install uefi-run in your system environment according to this reference link https://github.com/Richard-W/uefi-run. Note that uefi-run from snapstore may not work because of strict snap confinements. The preferred method is installing with cargo.

• Please install OVMF in your system environment according to this reference link https://github.com/tianocore/tianocore.github.io/wiki/OVMF. The easiest way is to install a special ovmf package found in many distros. For example, use the following command in Ubuntu:

  sudo apt install ovmf
  

• Set system environment variable OVMF_FD_PATH, for example:

  export OVMF_FD_PATH=/usr/share/OVMF/OVMF_CODE.fd
  

Now you can build application, for example UEFI boot test sample found under tests/boot/uefi:

# From the root of the zephyr repository
west build -b qemu_x86_64 tests/boot/uefi
west build -t run

This will build an image with the uefi boot test app, boot it on qemu_x86_64 using UEFI, and display the following console output:

UEFI Interactive Shell v2.2
EDK II
UEFI v2.70 (EDK II, 0x00010000)
Mapping table
      FS0: Alias(s):F0a:;BLK0:
          PciRoot(0x0)/Pci(0x1,0x1)/Ata(0x0)
     BLK1: Alias(s):
          PciRoot(0x0)/Pci(0x1,0x1)/Ata(0x0)
Press ESC in 1 seconds to skip startup.nsh or any other key to continue.
Starting UEFI application...
*** Zephyr EFI Loader ***
Zeroing 524544 bytes of memory at 0x105000
Copying 32768 data bytes to 0x1000 from image offset
Copying 20480 data bytes to 0x100000 from image offset 32768
Copying 540416 data bytes to 0x185100 from image offset 53248
Jumping to Entry Point: 0x112b (48 31 c0 48 31 d2 48)
*** Booting Zephyr OS build zephyr-v2.6.0-1472-g61810ec36d28  ***
Hello World! qemu_x86_64

Exit QEMU by pressing CTRL+A x.

Debugging

Refer to the detailed overview about Application Debugging.

Networking

The board supports SLIP networking over an emulated serial port (CONFIG_NET_SLIP_TAP=y). The detailed setup is described in Networking with QEMU.

It is also possible to use the QEMU built-in Ethernet adapter to connect to the host system. This is faster than using SLIP and is also the preferred way. See Networking with QEMU Ethernet for details.