What ring does qemu execute in?

Question

What ring does qemu execute in when not tied into an existing hypervisor?

Any more complete documentation on this subject would be appreciated as well.

Answer 1

QEMU always runs in the user ring, even when tied into a hypervisor.

Answer 2

Qemu runs in ring level 3 (User-space) while the hypervisor "KVM" that it uses for hardware-assisted mode runs in run-level level 0 (Kernel-space).