diff --git a/board/qemu/aarch64-virt/readme.txt b/board/qemu/aarch64-virt/readme.txt
index 76fc2d6f32..1ff2fba47d 100644
--- a/board/qemu/aarch64-virt/readme.txt
+++ b/board/qemu/aarch64-virt/readme.txt
@@ -1,6 +1,6 @@
 Run the emulation with:
 
-  qemu-system-aarch64 -M virt -cpu cortex-a57 -nographic -smp 1 -kernel output/images/Image -append "root=/dev/vda console=ttyAMA0" -netdev user,id=eth0 -device virtio-net-device,netdev=eth0 -drive file=output/images/rootfs.ext4,if=none,format=raw,id=hd0 -device virtio-blk-device,drive=hd0
+  qemu-system-aarch64 -M virt -cpu cortex-a53 -nographic -smp 1 -kernel output/images/Image -append "root=/dev/vda console=ttyAMA0" -netdev user,id=eth0 -device virtio-net-device,netdev=eth0 -drive file=output/images/rootfs.ext4,if=none,format=raw,id=hd0 -device virtio-blk-device,drive=hd0
 
 The login prompt will appear in the terminal that started Qemu.
 
diff --git a/configs/qemu_aarch64_virt_defconfig b/configs/qemu_aarch64_virt_defconfig
index 2706544e52..a7b097ef40 100644
--- a/configs/qemu_aarch64_virt_defconfig
+++ b/configs/qemu_aarch64_virt_defconfig
@@ -1,5 +1,6 @@
 # Architecture
 BR2_aarch64=y
+BR2_cortex_a53=y
 
 # System
 BR2_SYSTEM_DHCP="eth0"