“Open ISAs (RISC-V, OpenPOWER, etc)” – Alistair Francis, Hugh Blemings (LCA 2021 Online) | linux.conf.au

The recent phenomenal growth of RISC-V and OpenPOWER proves that Open CPU architectures are no longer only an academic project but are a serious contender among commercial processor architectures. Thanks to the active contributions from both industry pioneers and academic researchers, we are entering into an exciting era of open source hardware designs ranging from micro-controllers to server class enterprise systems backed by a growing open source ecosystem, constantly evolving and improving. A growing variety of hardware based on Open ISAs like RISC-V, OpenPOWER and others are becoming available, allowing a larger choice of end applications beyond embedded micro-controllers. At the chip level Open ISAs allow new extensions and specialised compute functions to be added – something we are now seeing in production systems. In this presentation we will give an update on the state of play of Open ISAs. With a new OpenPOWER and RISC-V announcements made in 2020 there is more to talk about, following on from the Open ISA miniconf at LCA2020. The relevance of OpenISAs to the broader Open source community/technical commons grows daily and with increasing consolidation of vendors in the closed CPU space, it is even more important that we focus on OpenISAs if we are to continue to enjoy viable libre computing alternatives. linux.conf.au is a conference about the Linux operating system, and all aspects of the thriving ecosystem of Free and Open Source Software that has grown up around it. Run since 1999, in a different Australian or New Zealand city each year, by a team of local volunteers, LCA invites more than 500 people to learn from the people who shape the future of Open Source. For more information on the conference see https://linux.conf.au/