Peripheral View

The Peripheral View displays the peripheral registers of your MCU in a tree structure, with each register's current value and the descriptions of its bitfields — sourced from the MCU vendor's SVD file.

Setup

Add the svdFile property to your launch.json:

{
  "type": "mcu-debug",
  "request": "launch",
  "name": "Debug",
  "servertype": "openocd",
  "executable": "${workspaceFolder}/build/firmware.elf",
  "svdFile": "${workspaceFolder}/STM32F407.svd"
}

Finding SVD Files

SVD (System View Description) files are provided by MCU vendors:

• STM32: included in STM32CubeIDE, or download from st.com. Also available in the cmsis-svd repository.
• Nordic: included in nRF SDK
• NXP, Microchip, etc.: available from their respective IDEs and CMSIS packs

The cmsis-svd GitHub repository aggregates SVD files for hundreds of MCUs.

Using the Peripheral View

The Peripheral View panel opens in the Run and Debug sidebar when a session is active and svdFile is configured.

• Expand a peripheral to see its registers
• Expand a register to see its bitfields
• Values update automatically when the target halts
• Click a register value to edit it — the write goes directly to the peripheral

What the SVD Provides

SVD Content	What it Enables
Peripheral base addresses	Register address calculation
Register offsets	Individual register addresses
Bitfield positions and widths	Bitfield decode in the view
Descriptions	Hover tooltips for each field
Access type (R/W/RO)	Prevents invalid writes

Limitations

• Values only update when the target is halted (not during live execution)
• Some vendor SVD files have errors — incorrect addresses or bitfield definitions. If a register shows unexpected values, cross-check with the datasheet.
• Very large SVD files (complex SoCs) may take a moment to parse on first open