1.4. Supported Guest CPU Models

Every hypervisor has its own policy for which CPU features the guest will see by default. The set of CPU features presented to the guest by the hypervisor depends on the CPU model chosen in the guest virtual machine configuration.

1.4.1. Listing the Guest CPU Models

To view a full list of the CPU models supported for an architecture type, run the virsh cpu-models architecture command. For example: 
$ virsh cpu-models x86_64
486
pentium
pentium2
pentium3
pentiumpro
coreduo
n270
core2duo
qemu32
kvm32
cpu64-rhel5
cpu64-rhel6
kvm64
qemu64
Conroe
Penryn
Nehalem
Westmere
SandyBridge
Haswell
athlon
phenom
Opteron_G1
Opteron_G2
Opteron_G3
Opteron_G4
Opteron_G5

$ virsh cpu-models ppc64
POWER7
POWER7_v2.1
POWER7_v2.3
POWER7+_v2.1
POWER8_v1.0
The full list of supported CPU models and features is contained in the cpu_map.xml file, located in /usr/share/libvirt/: 
# cat /usr/share/libvirt/cpu_map.xml
A guest's CPU model and features can be changed in the <cpu> section of the domain XML file. See Section 23.12, “CPU Models and Topology” for more information.
The host model can be configured to use a specified feature set as needed. For more information, see Section 23.12.1, “Changing the Feature Set for a Specified CPU”.