Kernel-based Virtual Machine (KVM) is a virtualization infrastructure for the Linux kernel that turns it into a hypervisor. It was merged into the Linux kernel mainline in kernel version 2.6.20, which was released on February 5, 2007. KVM requires a processor with hardware virtualization extension. KVM has also been ported to FreeBSD and illumos in the form of loadable kernel modules.KVM originally supported x86 processors and has been ported to S/390, PowerPC, and IA-64.