We are more than happy to announce the release of Renode 1.1 - the most recent update of Antmicro’s open source multinode simulation framework for scalable development and testing of IoT systems. The current release introduces several milestone developments in Renode, most notably - thanks to the kind co-sponsorship of our partner in the RISC‑V Foundation, Microsemi - in offering support for Windows. Adding to Linux and macOS, Renode now works on all major operating systems, thus further broadening its user base and potential of application, irrespective of what platform is used for development at your company.
Furthermore, besides several smaller changes, Silicon Labs' EFR32MG Cortex-M4 based wireless MCU support - co-sponsored by Manetos - is also officially added, broadening the coverage of the Cortex-M space so predominant in the IoT systems of today.
Starting with this release, officially supported packages for all three OSs are available, and this is the recommended method of installation for most use cases.
A full changelog is available in the Renode GitHub repository.
Renode with Zephyr, Contiki-NG and RIOT
The momentum around Renode is also increasing, with the framework gaining rapid adoption between various open source operating systems. You may remember that earlier in the year Renode has become one of the officially recommended developer tools for the Zephyr RTOS. Furthering our cooperation with the Zephyr team, Antmicro has recently demoed a continuous integration environment for the Zephyr RTOS’ networking stack at ELCE Europe 2017, highlighting Renode’s regression and interoperability testing features.
Our long-lasting cooperation with RISE SICS and the team behind the Contiki OS, whose newest incarnation is the recently released Contiki-NG with tons of new features and an improved governance model, features integration with Renode as an officially supported simulation tool. To see how to run Contiki-NG binaries in Renode from within the Contiki-NG source tree, visit Contiki-NG’s Wiki.
Closely on Contiki-NG’s toes is the RIOT OS, where a Pull Request allowing users to run Renode directly from within the RIOT source is waiting to be merged.
Of course, Renode is completely software-agnostic - it acts as virtual hardware that can execute any code you throw at it, so you can freely use it with whatever other operating system you prefer.
Antmicro will also be giving a presentation on Renode during the RISC‑V Simulation Infrastructure panel at the upcoming 7th RISC‑V Workshop at Western Digital. Stay tuned for more news from us soon.