Arduino Code? On My 8051? It’s More Likely Than You Think

A developer has created a workaround to run Arduino code on the legacy 8051-based STC8 microcontroller family by layering a RISC-V emulator (rv51) written in 8051 assembly on top of the chip. This allows use of the Arduino ecosystem on otherwise incompatible hardware, at the cost of 8kB of flash and a 100x–1000x performance slowdown. The approach targets the STC8H8K64U specifically and is acknowledged as a niche hack, given that native RISC-V chips are now available for similar prices.