The built-in local emulator is the quickest way how to get started with KVM and Android.
KVM on x86_64 does not provide the same guest protection as arm64 but you will be able to spawn virtual machines and use the same APIs to communicate with the guest. The main reason for choosing the x86_64 emulator over its arm64 counterpart is performance. With native virtualization it is easily 10x faster than arm64 emulation.
For optimal performance make sure to enable nested virtualization on your machine. Don't forget to add your user account into the kvm group, then re-login for it to take effect.
$ sudo gpasswd -a $USER kvm
Build Android for the emulator:
$ . build/envsetup.sh $ lunch sdk_phone_x86_64-eng $ m -j$(nproc)
Once you have an Android image, invoke emulator. The script will automatically find the image you just built and run it in QEMU.
$ emulator -no-window -show-kernel -writable-system -qemu -cpu host
Explanation of the arguments:
-no-window: run headless-show-kernel: print kernel UART logs to the console (useful for debugging),-writable-system: support remounting system/ as writable, needed for adb sync,-qemu -cpu host: needed to enable nested virtualization, instructs QEMU to allow Android access CPU features of the host kernelIf you get an error saying “x86_64 emulation currently requires hardware acceleration!”, your user account is not in the kvm group (see above).
You should now see the virtual device when you run:
$ adb devices List of devices attached emulator-5554 device