Antmicro’s virtual development framework for complex embedded systems. Renode was created by Antmicro as a virtual development tool for multinode embedded networks (both wired and wireless) and is intended to enable a scalable workflow for creating effective, tested and secure IoT systems.

With Renode, developing, testing, debugging and simulating unmodified software for IoT devices is fast, cost-effective and reliable.

Supported architectures include:

  • ARM Cortex-A and Cortex-M
  • x86
  • RISC-V
  • SPARC
  • POWER

Why use Renode?

Renode was created based on many years of experience with the development of software for embedded systems – both for gateways, on-board computers as well as sensor nodes and microcontrollers.

Testing and developing physical embedded systems is difficult due to poor reproducibility and lack of insight into the current state of a system, especially in multinode scenarios.

Renode addresses this issue by letting you run unmodified binaries, identical to the ones that you would normally flash onto their target hardware, on a virtual board or system of boards.

One important aspect of the tool is that it simulates not only CPUs but entire SoCs (including e.g. heterogeneous multicore SoCs and various peripherals) as well as the wired or wireless connections between them, which allows users to address complex scenarios and test real production software.

Installation

Using the Linux portable release
If you are a Linux user, the easiest way to use Renode is to download the latest linux-portable from the releases section and unpack it using:

mkdir renode_portable
tar xf renode-*.linux-portable.tar.gz -C renode_portable –strip-components=1
To use it from any location enter the created directory and add it to the system path:

cd renode_portable
export PATH=”`pwd`:$PATH”
Follow the ‘Additional Prerequisites’ section if you wish to use Robot framework for testing. Otherwise you are ready to go to the ‘Running Renode’ section.

Download

Renode can be downloaded here