docs/about/deprecated: Deprecate 32-bit arm hosts for system emulation

For running QEMU in system emulation mode, the user needs a rather
strong host system, i.e. not only an embedded low-frequency controller.
All recent beefy arm host machines should support 64-bit now, it's
unlikely that anybody is still seriously using QEMU on a 32-bit arm
CPU, so we deprecate the 32-bit arm hosts here to finally save use
some time and precious CI minutes.

Reviewed-by: Daniel P. Berrangé <berrange@redhat.com>
Reviewed-by: Wilfred Mallawa <wilfred.mallawa@wdc.com>
Message-Id: <20230306084658.29709-5-thuth@redhat.com>
Reviewed-by: Philippe Mathieu-Daudé <philmd@linaro.org>
Signed-off-by: Thomas Huth <thuth@redhat.com>

diff --git a/docs/about/deprecated.rst b/docs/about/deprecated.rst
index 1ca9dc33d6122a8bd09306d947c16bc287c7c2f7..33b942283f8044e8479ce5cc610e69a4a5274c44 100644 (file)
--- a/docs/about/deprecated.rst
+++ b/docs/about/deprecated.rst
@@ -206,6 +206,15 @@ be an effective use of its limited resources, and thus intends to discontinue
 it. Since all recent x86 hardware from the past >10 years is capable of the
 64-bit x86 extensions, a corresponding 64-bit OS should be used instead.
 
+System emulation on 32-bit arm hosts (since 8.0)
+''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''
+
+Since QEMU needs a strong host machine for running full system emulation, and
+all recent powerful arm hosts support 64-bit, the QEMU project deprecates the
+support for running any system emulation on 32-bit arm hosts in general. Use
+64-bit arm hosts for system emulation instead. (Note: "user" mode emulation
+continues to be supported on 32-bit arm hosts, too)
+
 
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 ----------------------