Create a Kunpeng ARMv8 Development Environment on Windows, Linux & Huawei Cloud

Introduction

Historically the Windows‑Intel alliance ("Wintel") has dominated developers' desktop platforms. To explore new technologies, many start by running a simple "hello, world" on their desktop. This article shows how to build a personal Kunpeng (Huawei ARM) development environment in three scenarios: Windows x86, Linux x86, and a Huawei Cloud ECS KC1 instance.

1. Running an ARMv8‑compatible emulator on a Windows x86 desktop

About QEMU

QEMU is an open‑source virtualization tool that can emulate CPUs via dynamic binary translation. When combined with KVM it can approach native performance, and it also supports user‑level CPU emulation, allowing programs compiled for one architecture to run on another.

Preparation

QEMU for Windows (download from https://www.qemu.org/download/ or https://qemu.weilnetz.de/w64/ , e.g., qemu-w64-setup-20190218.exe)

Ubuntu 18.04 ARM64 ISO (

http://cdimage.ubuntu.com/releases/18.04/release/ubuntu-18.04.2-server-arm64.iso

)

ARM64 BIOS package ( https://packages.ubuntu.com/bionic/qemu-efi-aarch64)

7‑zip or equivalent extraction tool

At least 100 GB of free disk space

Assumptions

VM disk files stored in D:\qemu\vm\test_kunpeng\ BIOS files stored in D:\qemu\bios\ Ubuntu ISO located at D:\download\ubuntu-18.04.2-server-arm64.iso QEMU installed in

C:\qemu

Step‑by‑step

Install QEMU (GUI installer, follow the prompts).

Extract the BIOS file qemu-efi-aarch64_0~20180205.c0d9813c-2_all.deb using 7‑zip and copy QEMU_EFI.fd to D:\qemu\bios .

Create a 40 GB virtual disk:

c:\qemu\qemu-img.exe create D:\qemu\vm\test_kunpeng\hdd01.img 40G

Launch the VM with the Ubuntu ISO:

c:\qemu\qemu-system-aarch64.exe -machine virt -cpu cortex-a57 -m 4096 -bios D:\qemu\bios\QEMU_EFI.fd -drive file=D:\qemu\vm\test_kunpeng\hdd01.img,format=raw -cdrom D:\download\ubuntu-18.04.2-server-arm64.iso -nographic

Follow the Ubuntu installer (choose serial console if using -nographic ), then reboot.

On subsequent boots remove the -cdrom option to avoid reinstalling from the ISO.

The VM will start with a graphical interface (if not using -nographic) and you can complete the Ubuntu installation.

2. Running an ARMv8 emulator on a Linux x86 host

The process is similar; install QEMU via your package manager (e.g., sudo apt install qemu-system-aarch64). On headless servers add the -nographic flag to use a text console. You can also use a desktop Linux distribution and follow the same steps as on Windows.

3. One‑click Kunpeng development environment on Huawei Cloud

Huawei Cloud offers ECS KC1 instances powered by Kunpeng 920 CPUs. Choose one of the provided operating system images (all support lazy‑loading) and bind an Elastic IP for external access. The cloud mirrors at mirrors.huaweicloud.com accelerate software installation.

After provisioning, you have a native Kunpeng environment ready for development.

Conclusion

By following the above instructions you can create a Kunpeng ARMv8 development environment on Windows, Linux, or Huawei Cloud, enabling you to develop and test software for the Kunpeng architecture.