How to do QEMU emulation for bare metal Raspberry Pi images

Question

I would like to emulate using QEMU the bare metal Raspberry Pi examples provided in this link https://github.com/dwelch67/raspberrypi.

Could someone let me know which commandline arguments should I use to get QEMU running. I checked in the internet and found that almost all the QEMU raspberry Pi tutorials emulates a GNU/Linux distro.

I found one link https://balau82.wordpress.com/2010/02/28/hello-world-for-bare-metal-arm-using-qemu/ but there the hardware used is versatilepb

Also I would like to know which commandline arguments for QEMU should I use to get the multicore support in Raspberry Pi2. Do I need to use the SMP parameter as mentioned here ?

Answer 1

bztsrc/raspi3-tutorial

https://github.com/bztsrc/raspi3-tutorial

# Get QEMU v2.12.0 for -M raspi3
# https://github.com/bztsrc/raspi3-tutorial
git clone git://git.qemu.org/qemu.git
cd qemu
git checkout v2.12.0
./configure --target-list=aarch64-softmmu
make -j`nproc`
export PATH="$(pwd)/aarch64-softmmu:${PATH}"
cd ..

# Get source.
git clone https://github.com/bztsrc/raspi3-tutorial
cd raspi3-tutorial
git checkout efdae4e4b23c5b0eb96292f2384dfc8b5bc87538

# Setup to use the host precompiled cross compiler.
# https://github.com/bztsrc/raspi3-tutorial/issues/30
sudo apt-get install gcc-aarch64-linux-gnu
find . -name Makefile | xargs sed -i 's/aarch64-elf-/aarch64-linux-gnu-/'

# Compile and run stuff.
cd 05_uart0
make
../../qemu/aarch64-softmmu/qemu-system-aarch64 -M raspi3 -kernel kernel8.img -serial stdio

Outcome: UART0 prints on terminal:

My serial number is: 0000000000000000

UART1 can be used instead of UART0 e.g. for tutorial 03_uart1 with:

-serial null -serial stdio

as explained at: https://github.com/bztsrc/raspi3-tutorial/pull/34

Here is a related non-RPI-specific QEMU question: https://stackoverflow.com/questions/38914019/how-to-make-bare-metal-arm-programs-and-run-them-on-qemu

Tested on Ubuntu 18.04 host.