Renode 1.4 released: 64-bit RISC-V HiFive Unleashed support, multiple Silicon Labs targets, and more

With the build-up to the RISC-V Workshop in Barcelona, and our continued partnership with Microsemi to elevate Renode as the industry’s tool of choice for RISC-V development, we are happy to say that the announced support for multi-core 64-bit, Linux-enabled RISC-V targets - along with a multitude of other new features - is now available in Renode’s milestone 1.4 release.

RISC-V - Freedom and Unleashed, and anything you’d like

Through our collaboration with Microsemi, SiFive and other RISC-V Foundation members, Renode 1.4 greatly expands its support for the open source RISC-V ISA. On top of the previously released Mi-V platform, 1.4 adds both SiFive’s Freedom E310 32-bit RISC-V CPU and, even more importantly, the acclaimed HiFive Unleashed 64-bit multi-core development board. In other words, you can grab a Renode package right from GitHub and run unmodified RISC-V Linux for the HiFive Unleashed with Ethernet support, GPIOs and other basic functionalities. Or - that’s the magic of Renode - you can take these CPUs and peripheral building blocks and set up your own purpose-built, customizable RISC-V SoC that’s not even there yet, writing and testing complex software before silicon is available.

Better time control framework

Renode 1.4 introduces a revamped comprehensive mechanism of time progression and synchronization, allowing for full control over the number of instructions executed by each CPU between synchronization points; more precise virtual time control; better customizability through the option to choose between fidelity and performance. This allows us to introduce new ways of setting up and controlling complex environments, and makes it easier for programmers to create new peripheral models.

Improvements, bugfixes and tooling

Renode 1.4 further saw practical bugfixes and improvements introduced in collaboration with Microsemi, relating to the RISC-V instruction set implementation and the GUI layer. We have removed the GTK dependency on Windows to enable running a 64-bit version of Renode on that platform. The changes and bugfixes resulted in a minor Renode 1.4.1 release, improving the performance and prettifying the GUI on Windows, as well as adding a new AXI UART Lite model.

There are also some important upgrades in Renode’s tooling integrations, including several improvements in Robot and GDB integration (e.g. adding support for 64-bit registers), as well as extending Wireshark support to macOS.

New Silicon Labs CPUs

Last but not least, thanks to a great contribution from the RIOT community, in Renode 1.4 you will also find support for many Silicon Labs Cortex-M platforms (EFM32, EFR32 and EZR32 MCUs), which are becoming increasingly popular with many of our customers. If you are building a Silicon Labs-based system where you think Renode could help, please reach out to us at contact@renode.io - we’re definitely interested to hear about your project/setup.

If all that sounds interesting, download Renode from GitHub today and see for yourself!