semu

A minimalist RISC-V emulator capable of running Linux the kernel and corresponding userland. semu implements the following:

• RISC-V instruction set architecture: RV32IMA
• Privilege levels: S and U modes
• Control and status registers (CSR)
• Virtual memory system: RV32 MMU
• UART: 8250/16550
• PLIC (platform-level interrupt controller): 32 interrupts, no priority
• Standard SBI, with the timer extension
• VirtIO: virtio-net, mapped as TAP interface

Prerequisites

Device Tree compiler (dtc) is required. To install it on Debian/Ubuntu Linux, enter the following command:

$ sudo apt install device-tree-compiler

For macOS, use the following command:

$ brew install dtc

Build and Run

Build the emulator:

$ make

Download prebuilt Linux kernel image:

$ make check

Please be patient while semu is running.

Reference output:

Starting syslogd: OK
Starting klogd: OK
Running sysctl: OK
Starting network: OK

Welcome to Buildroot
buildroot login:

Enter root to access shell.

Build Linux kernel image and root file system

License

semu is released under the MIT License. Use of this source code is governed by a MIT-style license that can be found in the LICENSE file.