{"id":9053,"date":"2026-01-29T12:58:50","date_gmt":"2026-01-29T20:58:50","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/visualgdb.com\/w\/?p=9053"},"modified":"2026-01-29T12:58:50","modified_gmt":"2026-01-29T20:58:50","slug":"targeting-the-risc-v-core-on-raspberry-pi-pico-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/visualgdb.com\/tutorials\/raspberry\/pico\/risc_v\/","title":{"rendered":"Targeting the RISC-V core on Raspberry Pi Pico 2"},"content":{"rendered":"

This tutorial shows how to build and debug projects for the RISC-V core on the Raspberry Pi 2 (RP2350). We will show how to create a basic project, configure the debugging settings, and will use VisualGDB’s Chronometer to analyze the cycle counts of individual code lines, so you can compare performance between the ARM and RISC-V cores.<\/p>\n

Before you begin, install VisualGDB 6.1 or later.<\/p>\n

    \n
  1. Start Visual Studio and open the VisualGDB’s Raspberry Pi Pico project wizard:\"\"<\/a><\/li>\n
  2. Enter the name and location for your project:\"\"<\/a><\/li>\n
  3. Targeting the RISC-V core requires using the toolchain shipped by the Raspberry Pi developers, so make sure you select that option in the toolchain selector:\"\"<\/a>If you are using the PicoSDK Code extension, VisualGDB will automatically pick up the tools\/SDKs installed by it. If not, click the “Install Raspberry Pi Pico SDK” link to view the versions available for download.<\/li>\n
  4. Select the SDK version you would like to download. The package icon means that the Raspberry Pi foundation has published pre-built tools (e.g. picotool) for that version:\"\"<\/a>You can also clone an arbitrary Github tag and use it as an SDK, but you would need to setup tools like the toolchain\/picotool manually.<\/li>\n
  5. Press “OK”. VisualGDB will automatically load the list of the dependencies from the PicoSDK VS Code extension, and will download the necessary tools:\"\"<\/a>If you have previously downloaded them using VS Code, VisualGDB will simply reuse the existing tools.<\/li>\n
  6. Select the latest SDK in the SDK selector, pick the board that is based on the Pico 2 chip (RP2350) and make sure the RISC-V core is selected:\"\"<\/a><\/li>\n
  7. Pick a sample you would like to clone. In this tutorial we will clone the simplest “Blinking LED” sample:\"\"<\/a><\/li>\n
  8. Finally, select the debug method. The RISC-V core can only be debugged using the Raspberry Pi’s own fork of OpenOCD, so make sure you have selected OpenOCD (PicoSDK) <\/strong>and the Debugged Device<\/strong> explicitly mentions RISC-V:\"\"<\/a><\/li>\n
  9. Press”Finish”to generate the project. You can use the Disassembly view in the Embedded Memory Explorer to verify that the code is using RISC-V instructions:\"\"<\/a><\/li>\n
  10. WARNING!<\/strong> If this is the first time you are running RISC-V firmware on your Raspberry Pi, the RISC-V cores won’t be running, and hence the debugging will fail! To fix this, you would need to first program the RISC-V image into the board using the bootloader. Hold the BOOTSEL button on the board, and re-plug it into the USB port. Make sure it appears as a disk drive: \"\"<\/a><\/li>\n
  11. Right-click on the project node in Solution Explorer (with the Raspberry Pi icon) and select “Program FLASH Memory”:\"\"<\/a><\/li>\n
  12. Select your Pico device in the list and press OK:\"\"<\/a><\/li>\n
  13. The FLASH memory will get programmed and the RP2350 will restart in the RISC-V mode. You can now press F5 in Visual Studio to begin debugging it:\"\"<\/a><\/li>\n
  14. Just like the ARM CPUs, RISC-V supports background memory reads, so you can use the Live Watch<\/a> window to view global variables in real time without stopping the target:\"\"<\/a><\/li>\n
  15. RISC-V also supports instruction counters. You can enable it via the Chronometer configuration in VisualGDB Project Properties -> Embedded Debug Tweaking<\/strong> (Custom edition or higher):\"\"<\/a><\/li>\n
  16. Now you can see how many cycle counts it took to do a step, or reach another breakpoint, so you can fine-tune and optimize your code:\"\"<\/a><\/li>\n
  17. If you would like to use picotool<\/a> to directly control your device (e.g. reboot it into ARM\/RISC-V mode), you can use the View->VisualGDB Smart Terminal<\/strong> command. It will open a terminal window<\/a> with the PicoSDK build environment pre-loaded, and will remember the command and directory history for each individual project:\"\"<\/a><\/li>\n<\/ol>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    This tutorial shows how to build and debug projects for the RISC-V core on the Raspberry Pi 2 (RP2350). We<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[89],"tags":[43,151],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/visualgdb.com\/w\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9053"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/visualgdb.com\/w\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/visualgdb.com\/w\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/visualgdb.com\/w\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/visualgdb.com\/w\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9053"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/visualgdb.com\/w\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9053\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9073,"href":"https:\/\/visualgdb.com\/w\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9053\/revisions\/9073"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/visualgdb.com\/w\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9053"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/visualgdb.com\/w\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9053"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/visualgdb.com\/w\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9053"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}