QEMU is a free and open-source emulator that performs hardware virtualization. It is widely available for variety of host operating-systems and requires minimal configuration for use in operating-system development. It is capable of emulating a wide variety of systems including ARM, x86 and RISC-V.

Features

• Supports multiple hosts, multiple targets.
• Two operating modes: full system emulation (of interest for operating-system development) and Linux user process emulation (of interests to people who - want to emulate applications).
  Uses 'just in time' code compilation technique (allowing reuse of previous interpretation). This makes it faster than the popular alternative emulator Bochs.
• Provides native GDB support. QEMU can be attached to GDB/DDD to debug the guest operating-system. Refer to the GDB-Stub section below for more information.
• Supports VBE 2.0.