Raspberry PI emulation - "state of the art"

[Filipe Pinto]

Hi,

I'm new to the group. I'm also new to this problem.

As part of my research on IoT architectures, I need to emulate Raspberry Pi. My ultimate objective is to research Hyperledger Indy on smart devices. It would be great to be able to have an environment with multiple devices.

I was excited when I saw this article - https://hackernoon.com/raspberry-pi-cluster-emulation-with-docker-compose-xo3l3tyw

However, the author is emulating RPI 1, which doesn't have enough power to do what I need to do.

Because of that I started to look for something more advanced and found this video - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y-FUvi1z1aU&t=865s&ab_channel=SourceMeetsSink - "Emulating ARM64 Raspberry Pi Image using QEMU"

Unfortunately this video is 2 years old. I wonder if there are more advanced ways to do it.

I continued my research and end up coming across ARM virtual tools on AWS - https://aws.amazon.com/marketplace/pp/prodview-urbpq7yo5va7g (which accordingly to them - "Provides a functionally accurate representation of a physical SoC, simulating software-visible behavior")

At this point, I started looking at the usual places, namely "stack overflow et al".

Since I'm new to the emulation of ARM processors, the following questions popped into my mind:

1. why is emulation of an accurate representation of a RPI physical SoC is so complex? From my initial research I'm sure it involves the kernel but I was wondering if you could point me to an article that would make it clear for people that haven't been involved
2. what is the most recent known successful RPI emulation? Is it RPI 3?
3. using open source would be ideal (e.g.,QEMU), but would you recommend against it since my ultimate objective is to enter the Hyperledger identity stack?
4. have any of you ever used the ARM tools to replicate their hardware?
6. have any of you ever used the ARM tools on AWS to replicate their hardware?
7. is there any article that you  know of that explains in detail the differences between "physical SoC" versus "processor" emulations?

I'm kind of stuck so any assistance you can provide it would be very welcome.

FP