Docker and QEMU: A Powerful Combination for Accelerating Edge Computing Development and Optimizing Code Compilation
QEMU is a type-2 hypervisor that allows you to run virtual machines on your host system. It can emulate a wide range of architectures, including x86 and ARM. The qemu-system-aarch64 package provides an AArch64 (ARM64) system emulator, which can be used to emulate an entire system, including the CPU and various peripheral devices.
When compiling or Testing code for the Raspberry Pi, QEMU can be used to simulate an AArch64 system on an x86 machine. This means that developers don’t need a real Raspberry Pi to compile and test code for it. This also works for other edge devices like Jetson, Beaglebone, etc.
The process of using QEMU to compile code for the Raspberry Pi involves setting up a virtual machine using the qemu-system-aarch64 package and then installing the necessary tools and dependencies on the virtual machine. This comes with the GCC compiler and other tools, which is needed to compile code for the ARM architecture.
One of the advantages of using QEMU to compile code for the Raspberry Pi is that it allows developers to test and debug code on an x86 machine, which is typically more powerful than a Raspberry Pi.
