Red Hat engineer Paolo Bonzini submitted the initial batch of KVM changes targeting the Linux 6.12 kernel. This is just the first batch and notably lacking all of the KVM x86 Intel/AMD changes for the cycle. But in the non-x86 space there is a fair amount of activity for this next kernel version for those making use of KVM as part of the open-source virtualization stack.

The highlights for this initial KVM pull request for Linux 6.12 are centered around ARM64, RISC-V, and LoongArch CPU architectures.

KVM on ARM is adding FP8 support, nested virtualization on ARM now supporting the address translation family of instructions (FEAT_ATS1A), and other fixes.

KVM on LoongArch for Linux 6.12 adds [1]Loongson Binary Translation to speed-up x86 and ARM emulation on these Chinese processors. LoongArch with KVM also now adds PMU support for guests, enables paravirt feature control from the VMM, and other enhancements.

Lastly KVM on RISC-V will no longer zero-out the PMU snapshot area before freeing data, there is support for legacy PMU access from guests, and other fixes.

More details on the KVM changes for Linux 6.12 can be found via [2]this pull request . Stay tuned for the secondary set of KVM updates within the next week or so for rolling out the Intel/AMD KVM changes and other updates.



[1] https://www.phoronix.com/news/Linux-6.12-LoongArch-KVM

[2] https://lore.kernel.org/lkml/20240915064621.5268-1-pbonzini@redhat.com/