[Qemu-discuss] Basic Question on QEMU Internals

[Patrick]

Hello,

I am new to QEMU, and I am trying to get a basic understanding of QEMU's internal operations​​. There are two statements I've come across in the documentation that I am trying to figure out how they fit together.

At the beginning of section 2 of the "QEMU Internals" page linked from the QEMU website (here: http://qemu.weilnetz.de/qemu-tech.html), it says the following:

​"​

Like bochs [3], QEMU emulates an x86 CPU.

​"​

​However, on the Wikipedia page (here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/QEMU) under the section on the Tiny Code Generator, it says:

​"​

The whole translation task thus consists of two parts: blocks of target code (TBs) being rewritten in TCG ops - a kind of machine-independent intermediate notation, and subsequently this notation being compiled for the host's architecture by TCG.

​"

Since the target code is getting translated to TCG ops, and QEMU is emulating an x86 CPU, then wouldn't the TCG ops need to get translated to x86 to run on the emulated x86 CPU? Why would TCG ops get compiled into the host's architecture?​ 

Any help or reference to additional documentation is appreciated.

Thanks,

Patrick