It lets you halt, step, inspect memory, and flash firmware on a RISC-V chip using a $5 cable instead of a $1,000 debugger. Why the Fuss? The Cost Problem Vendors like Segger (J-Link) and Lauterbach make phenomenal debuggers. But if you are a hobbyist, a startup, or an educator, spending $500+ per seat is a non-starter.
Enter .
If OpenOCD already supports your RISC-V chip, use that. But for obscure Chinese RISC-V SoCs or legacy EJTAG cores, . Real-World Use Case: Rescuing a “Bricked” T-Head Board Last month, a friend’s C906-based development board got stuck in a boot loop. The vendor’s Windows-only tool couldn’t connect. We wired up an FT232H, ran: Ejtag Tiny Tools Software
Happy debugging!
ejtag-cli -t riscv -device GD32V -halt -peek 0x20000000 This makes it perfect for CI/CD pipelines in embedded testing. This is the killer feature. You can run: It lets you halt, step, inspect memory, and
While the name might sound like a niche side project, this suite is quietly becoming the Swiss Army knife for low-cost, open-source RISC-V debugging. In this post, I’ll break down what Ejtag Tiny Tools actually is, why you need it, and how it compares to the big players. Ejtag Tiny Tools is a lightweight, open-source software suite designed to interface with EJTAG (Enhanced JTAG) compliant RISC-V cores. Originally popularized in the MIPS ecosystem, EJTAG has found a second life in the RISC-V world. These tools provide the glue logic between your host PC (Linux/Windows/Mac) and a cheap USB debug probe (like a FT232H or CMSIS-DAP).
The project needs more contributors—especially for documentation and RISC-V target definitions. If you’ve ever wished JTAG debugging was more democratic, consider testing this suite and filing a bug report. But if you are a hobbyist, a startup,
If you’ve spent any time working with RISC-V cores—especially those from vendors like SiFive, T-Head (Alibaba), or Andes—you’ve likely run into the acronym JTAG . And if you’ve tried to debug without a commercial license, you’ve probably felt the pain of proprietary toolchains.