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0x00-uart

A RISC-V CH32V003 embedded UART driver in pure RV32EC Assembler w/ tutorial.

About WCH and the QingKe Core

The company

Nanjing Qinheng Microelectronics Co., Ltd. (WCH / 南京沁恒微电子股份有限公司) was founded in May 2004 by Wang Chunhua (王春华) in Nanjing, Jiangsu, China. The company designs 32-bit RISC-V microcontrollers and USB interface chips. Their product lines include the CH32V (RISC-V), CH32X (RISC-V + USB), CH32L (low power), and CH58x (BLE) families. All are open-source hardware — full reference manuals, datasheets, and SDKs are published on GitHub (github.com/openwch).

The name

"QingKe" (青稞) means Tibetan highland barley — the hardy grain that grows on the high-altitude plateau where nothing else survives. It symbolizes resilience in harsh conditions: a $0.30 microcontroller that works at 165 °C and costs less than its own decoupling capacitors.

QingKe core versions

Core	ISA	Registers	Used in
V2A	RV32EC	16	CH32V003
V2C	RV32EMC	16	CH32V003 (multiply variant)
V3	RV32IMAC	32	—
V4A	RV32IMAC	32	CH32V203
V4B	RV32IMAC	32	CH32V303
V4C	RV32IMAC	32	CH32V208
V4F	RV32IMACF	32	CH32V307

What RV32EC actually means

Letter	Name	What it adds	Ours?
I	Integer	Base ISA, 32 registers	No
E	Embedded	Reduced to 16 registers	YES
M	Multiply	Hardware mul/div	No
A	Atomic	Atomic load/store	No
C	Compressed	16-bit instruction encoding	YES
F	Float	Single-precision FPU	No
B	Bit manipulation	Bit twist/rotate ops	No

CH32V003 = RV32EC = E + C. No multiply, no atomic, no float, no bit manipulation.

Toolchain

Tool	Purpose
riscv64-unknown-elf-as	Assembler
riscv64-unknown-elf-ld	Linker
riscv64-unknown-elf-objcopy	Binary extraction
riscv64-unknown-elf-objdump	Disassembly / debugging
riscv64-elf-gdb	GDB for on-chip debugging
wlink	Flash via SWIO (Rust, cargo install wlink)
wch-openocd	On-chip debug server (WCH fork, built from source)

ISA flags: -march=rv32ec_zicsr -mabi=ilp32e -g

Override the prefix if using a different toolchain:

make PREFIX=riscv-none-elf-

Setup & Installation

To fully automate the installation of all necessary tools and compilers, simply run:

make setup

This command will automatically detect your OS (macOS, Linux, or Windows via MSYS2) and install everything required to build, debug, and simulate the RISC-V core:

• Verilator and GTKWave (with custom UDP mouseover patches)
• RISC-V GCC Toolchain (riscv-none-elf-gcc)
• WCH OpenOCD and GDB for on-chip debugging
• wlink for flashing via SWIO
• Python dependencies for Codezoom (including windows-curses on Windows)

Windows Prerequisites (MSYS2)

On Windows, you must run make setup inside an MSYS2 terminal, as it requires a Linux-like GNU environment to compile GTKWave from source.

To install MSYS2 and make in one step, open Windows PowerShell and run:

winget install MSYS2.MSYS2

Once that finishes, open the newly installed MSYS2 MinGW 64-bit terminal from your Start Menu and run:

pacman -Syu

This updates every MSYS2 package first. Skipping it is the #1 cause of the GTKWave segfault (cannot register existing type 'GdkPixbuf') on Windows, because mismatched gtk3/gdk-pixbuf versions are installed. Run it twice if the terminal asks you to close and reopen it.

Then install make and gcc:

pacman -S make gcc

You can then navigate to your project folder (e.g. cd /c/Users/YourName/Desktop/0x00-uart) and run make setup!

Build

make

Produces build/0x00-uart.elf (with debug symbols) and build/0x00-uart.bin (raw binary for flashing).

The -g flag is always passed to the assembler, so the ELF retains full debug info regardless of which target you build.

Flash

make flash

Uses wlink to write the binary over SWIO (PD1).

Debug — VS Code (recommended)

Press F5 in VS Code to start a full debug session. This automatically:

1. Builds build/0x00-uart.elf with debug symbols
2. Starts OpenOCD as a background task (WCH-LinkE via SDI)
3. Launches riscv64-elf-gdb, connects to OpenOCD on localhost:3333
4. Resets the CPU, halts, and loads the ELF into flash

Prerequisites

• WCH-LinkE programmer connected to the CH32V003 (SWIO = PD1, SWCLK = PD2)
• VS Code extension: marus25.cortex-debug
• VS Code extension: zhwu95.riscv

Debug workflow

F5  ──▶  make (build with -g)
         │
         ▼
         Start OpenOCD task (background)
         │
         ▼
         GDB connects to localhost:3333
         │
         ▼
         monitor reset halt
         load
         │
         ▼
         ▸ Breakpoints, stepping, registers, memory

Stopping OpenOCD

When you stop the debug session (Shift+F5), OpenOCD keeps running in the VS Code terminal. Kill it manually with Ctrl+C in that terminal, or run:

pkill -f openocd

Both make debug and the VS Code "Start OpenOCD" task automatically kill any existing OpenOCD before starting a new one, so you don't need to do this manually when restarting.

Debug — Terminal (manual GDB)

Step 1 — Start OpenOCD

make debug

Step 2 — Connect GDB

In a second terminal:

make gdb

Useful GDB commands

Command	Description
break main	Set breakpoint at main
break usart_tx	Set breakpoint at usart_tx
break usart_rx	Set breakpoint at usart_rx
continue	Resume execution
step / stepi	Step one line / one instruction
next / nexti	Step over function / instruction
print t0	Print register t0
x/10i $pc	Disassemble 10 instructions from PC
x/16x 0x40013800	Dump 16 words from USART1 base
monitor reset halt	Reset and halt the CPU
quit	Exit GDB

OpenOCD configuration

The openocd.cfg configures OpenOCD for the CH32V003 with a WCH-LinkE programmer:

adapter driver wlinke        # WCH-LinkE USB adapter
adapter speed 6000           # 6 MHz debug clock
transport select sdi          # SDI transport (not JTAG/SWD)

wlink_set_address 0x00000000  # Flash starts at 0x00000000
set _CHIPNAME wch_riscv
sdi newtap $_CHIPNAME cpu -irlen 5 -expected-id 0x00001

Simulation (Verilator + GTKWave + Codezoom)

This project includes a full cycle-accurate simulation environment using the open-source Verilator tool and a custom-patched version of GTKWave. It simulates the exact PicoRV32 processor core used in the CH32V003.

1. Run the simulation

make sim

This target:

1. Assembles your firmware (.s files).
2. Transpiles the picorv32.v and testbench to highly-optimized C++ using Verilator.
3. Executes the simulation in the background to capture all internal CPU state (registers, memory bus, etc.) and dumps it to build/trace.vcd.
4. Simulates UART output by intercepting memory writes to the UART registers and printing them to the terminal.

2. View the waveform and code execution

make wave

This launches a dual-window workflow:

• GTKWave: Opens the waveform viewer with a pre-configured save file (sim/gtkwave_setup.gtkw) that automatically loads the system clock, memory bus, and internal processor debug instructions. The debug signals are formatted as ASCII text natively.
• Codezoom: A terminal-based UI (sim/codezoom.py) that launches concurrently in a new terminal window automatically (supports macOS, Linux, and Windows).

3. Synchronizing Codezoom with GTKWave (Hover Feature)

Because we use a specially-patched version of GTKWave (installed via make setup), hovering your mouse over the GTKWave timeline transmits a UDP packet to Codezoom on port 6502 containing the exact Program Counter (PC) value or Assembly Instruction at that picosecond.

To use this:

1. Move your mouse pointer directly over the green waveform trace for dbg_insn_addr or dbg_ascii_instr in GTKWave.
2. Slowly drag your mouse horizontally across the timeline.
3. A small yellow tooltip will pop up under your mouse, and Codezoom will instantly jump to the corresponding assembly instruction in your terminal window in real-time!

Make targets

Target	Description
make	Build build/0x00-uart.elf and build/0x00-uart.bin
make flash	Flash .bin via wlink (SWIO)
make debug	Start OpenOCD debug server (port 3333)
make gdb	Connect GDB to a running OpenOCD session
make clean	Remove build/ directory

Project structure

.
├── src/
│   ├── regs.s           # Peripheral register definitions (.equ only)
│   ├── start.s          # Reset vector table and startup code
│   ├── uart.s           # UART peripheral subroutines
│   └── main.s           # UART terminal main loop
├── datasheets/          # Official WCH reference manuals and datasheets
├── link.ld             # Linker script (16K flash, 2K RAM, 512-byte stack)
├── Makefile            # Cross-platform build (macOS / Linux / Windows)
├── openocd.cfg         # OpenOCD config for CH32V003 + WCH-LinkE
├── CH32V003xx.svd      # SVD file for cortex-debug register view
├── README.md           # This file
├── TUTORIAL.md         # UART assembly tutorial
└── .vscode/
    ├── settings.json   # *.s → riscv language mode
    ├── extensions.json # Recommended: riscv, cortex-debug
    ├── launch.json     # F5 debug config (cortex-debug + OpenOCD)
    └── tasks.json      # Start/Stop OpenOCD tasks

How it works

1. Startup: Set stack pointer, copy .data, zero .bss, call boot_clock_8mhz, configure mstatus/mtvec, jump to main via jal.

2. Clock: boot_clock_8mhz switches SYSCLK to HSI, clears flash latency, sets HPRE = /3 → 8 MHz HCLK.

3. USART init: Enables GPIOD + USART1 + AFIO clocks, configures PD6 as AF output (TX) and PD1 as input pull-up (RX), sets AFIO remap for RX on PD1, configures BRR for 115200 baud.

4. Echo loop: Blocks on usart_rx, checks for backspace/enter, stores character in buffer, echoes via usart_tx.

5. Dynamic remap: usart_tx toggles AFIO between TX mode (Remap 10) and RX mode (Remap 01) on every byte. This enables half-duplex operation, as the CH32V003 cannot map USART1 to the badge's PD6 (TX) and PD1 (RX) pins simultaneously.

License

This project is fully open source. Check the LICENSE file for more details.