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RISC-V International Newsletter – May/June 2023

By May 31, 2023August 9th, 2023No Comments

Message from RISC-V International

The growth and reach of the RISC-V ecosystem continues to inspire me during 2023! We are seeing incredible adoption across a huge number of applications and a diverse range of software workloads. The RISC-V Advocate program launched in April to support the global momentum and adoption of RISC-V. This program underscores our commitment to making RISC-V the most efficient place to foster innovation by providing technologies from the RISC-V ecosystem the widest reach across application spaces and enabling the most efficient return on time for developers by allowing them to concentrate on their value add, the thing that makes their product unique. 

Software is a key focus of our attention. Compatibility and portability of workloads is essential, and it is for this reason that we have been working as a community on RISC-V Profiles. These profiles define versioned collections of instructions, behavior, and state that enable application portability between implementations. Organizations implementing these profiles can demonstrate compatibility by taking the Architectural Compatibility Test, and after they pass, they can use RISC-V Compatible™ branding to promote their compatibility to potential implementers and users of their processors. I would like to congratulate Alibaba for becoming the first of our members to pass the compatibility test with its XuanTie C908 processor.

Developers targeting RISC-V based systems can be confident in the strength of our growing software ecosystem. Our new RISC-V Ecosystem Landscape shows the diversity of software support on RISC-V from Applications to Libraries, Infrastructure to Runtimes, Operating Systems to Hypervisors. There is huge technical and business value here, enabling efficient development by taking advantage of pre-existing components, saving both time and effort, and enabling a focus on innovation. RISC-V members can tap into this value by adding their technologies to the landscape and to RISC-V Exchange, enabling potential users to find them easily! 

We are investing as an ecosystem to enable efficient deployment of software workloads on RISC-V. Keep checking back on the RISC-V Ecosystem Landscape, explore the different projects and technologies and keep an eye on the sheer size and the value of the ecosystem at the top of the page. Currently we are showing over 170 different components, both hardware and software, with a market cap of over $5T. You’re only going to see this continue to explode in size as the ecosystem continues to invest together in the future of RISC-V. 

The rich ecosystem of RISC-V technologies needs trained developers to take advantage of them. We’re further accelerating the developer on-ramp through our new online training and certification, including the newly launched RISC-V Fundamentals course and RVFA exam intended for those interested in an entry-level RISC-V role or transitioning from another architecture.

Additionally, RISC-V Summit Europe is right around the corner on June 5-9 in Barcelona. Thank you to our sponsors for supporting this event. RISC-V Summit China will be on August 23-25 in Beijing, and RISC-V Summit North America will be on November 7-9 in Santa Clara. Save the dates and join us to engage deeply in the community, learn about the latest advances, and chart a course for the future.

Dive into the latest updates with our technical, marketing and academic groups, submit your next mentorship proposal, and check out our YouTube channel for more resources.

RISC-V thrives on collaboration and community involvement.

Best,

Calista Redmond

CEO, RISC-V International

Technical Update

The Application-Processor Trusted Execution Environment (AP-TEE) interface proposal for RISC-V-based platforms is progressing towards architecture review enabling application workloads that require confidentiality to reduce the Trusted Computing Base (TCB) to a minimum. The proposed specification supports an architecture that can be used for Application and Virtual Machine workloads.

The SPMP (supervisor mode PMP) extension allows isolation between S/U and U/U under supervisor control in systems without paged virtual memory. The architecture review of the proposed extension is scheduled to begin soon, aiming to freeze by q3 this year.  

The Shadow stacks and landing pads extension will counter many classical code reuse attack techniques, and enforce control flow integrity. Backward edge attacks are mitigated by a protected shadow stack, and forward edge by labeled landing pads. The proposal is well advanced and aims to freeze in Q2 this year.

Marketing Update

Our Market Development focus is kicking off, starting with Automotive. We have a core group currently discussing market opportunities, points of differentiation and important personas to connect with, while also starting to think about high level messaging. Contact Andy Moore (andy@riscv.org) for more details and to help us raise the profile of RISC-V to the automotive industry. Track progress and get involved. Join the RISC-V Marketing Committee.

RISC-V Events

RISC-V Summit Europe (June 5-9, Barcelona, Spain) – The first-ever RISC-V Summit Europe is less than a week away! Areas of focus include Automotive, Security, Safety, HPC and Data Center, AI/ML, Software and Open Hardware. Check out the agenda here.

A BIG thank you to our diamond sponsors!

RISC-V Summit China is planned for August 23-25, 2023 in Beijing. Information on sponsor packages is now available and Call For Proposals is coming this week. 

RISC-V Summit North America will take place Nov. 7 – 8 at the Santa Clara Convention Center. Sponsorship registration and the Call For Proposals information are available. Deadline for abstract submissions is Friday, July 14.

Check out RISC-V at these upcoming events:

Design Automation Conference (San Francisco, July 9-13) – The RISC-V Zone exhibit area connects the community of designers, executives, researchers, and developers harnessing the power of the RISC-V open source architecture for ASIC and FPGA designs. 

Meanwhile, check out all the events where the community is showcasing RISC-V. 

To submit an event or webinar to be posted on the website, use the event submission request form on the RISC-V events page.

RISC-V In the News, just a few of many we see each day:

RISC-V Blogs

Do you have news or blogs we can amplify? The blog, In the News, and social media submission request form can be found on the RISC-V News & Blog page.

RISC-V Community 

There are many additional areas to engage in our community building efforts:

Stay Connected with RISC-V

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Stay Connected With RISC-V

We send occasional news about RISC-V technical progress, news, and events.