QEMU Embedded Simulation

Purpose

Guide agents through QEMU for bare-metal and RTOS firmware: machine selection, loading ELF images, semihosting, peripheral models, and GDB debug — distinct from Linux-focused skills/virtualization/qemu-kvm and skills/kernel-dev/qemu-for-kernel-development.

When to Use

• Test Cortex-M firmware without board
• CI smoke test for linker script / startup
• GDB single-step before OpenOCD on hardware
• RISC-V bring-up on virt machine

Workflow

1. ARM Cortex-M (QEMU STM32 boards)

QEMU models a subset of STM32 boards (see qemu.org STM32 docs):