KVM Forum 2014

With ARMv8 silicon still scarce there is demand for a QEMU based solution to replace ARM's non-free Fast Models. We describe the challenges in providing such a port along with some novel techniques used to verify the implementation. We used a tool called RISU, which creates pseudo-random sequences of instructions which can be run in lock-step between a master and slave to verify emulation against a known good reference. We will discuss the limitations of the tool and analyse the bugs that were discovered after the initial patches were merged upstream. We will compare the results of code coverage analysis with the traditional black box testing used to validate system emulation. Finally we shall discuss how the testing could be better integrated into the project and how the lessons learnt could be applied to other architectures.