semantic: 0.841 other: 0.834 graphic: 0.770 instruction: 0.709 device: 0.707 assembly: 0.683 network: 0.625 boot: 0.621 socket: 0.584 mistranslation: 0.577 KVM: 0.534 vnc: 0.530 qemu-system-s390x: no SMP support without KVM It seems SMP support is not implemented for s390x target, at least when not running under KVM. There is also no error message when starting qemu, it just fails when the kernel tries to bring up the CPUs: $ qemu-system-s390x -nographic -smp 8 -kernel s390x/kernel.debian [ 0.003309] Initializing cgroup subsys cpuset [ 0.004183] Initializing cgroup subsys cpu [ 0.004263] Initializing cgroup subsys cpuacct [ 0.004493] Linux version 3.16.0-4-s390x (