Working with LiteX and (co-)simulation with Renode¶
LiteX used as the soft SoC on Fomu is a very robust and scalable soft SoC platform, capable of running both bare metal binaries, Zephyr and even Linux.
It is also supported in Renode, which is an open source simulation framework that lets you run unmodified software in a fully controlled and inspectable environment. Renode is a functional simulator, which means it aims to mimic the observable behavior of the hardware instead of trying to be cycle-accurate.
We will now see how a full-blown Zephyr RTOS can be run on LiteX in Renode, and then how this simulation can be interfaced with a Fomu for a useful HW/SW co-development workflow.
Tip
Apart from RISC-V and LiteX platforms, Renode supports many other architectures and platforms, as described in the documentation, which also includes a user manual and a few tutorials. You can also take a look at a Video Tutorials section on Renode’s website.
Keep in mind that all platforms and configurations in Renode used in this tutorial are contained in text/config files - you can also explore Renode’s usage patterns by just inspecting those files for details.