Looking back at 2023, there are many different ways to measure progress and success. You could point to the growing adoption of RISC-V—which is in more than 13 billion cores on the market—or take into account how the RISC-V community keeps getting bigger and more diverse. There are now over 4,100 members across 70 countries, and we have more than 75 technical working groups driving progress on RISC-V standards, software, and tools. It’s been an incredible year for RISC-V, and we’re pleased to share some of our community’s key achievements in 2023.
1 – Ratifying New Specifications: This year we’ve been hard at work ratifying 16 specifications. Some of the recent updates include the ratification of RISC-V Profiles specification version 1.0 with RVA20, RVI20, and RVA22, RISC-V Cryptography Extensions Volume II and the RISC-V IOMMU Architecture Specification specification.
2 – Expanding RISC-V Developer Support: RISC-V recently launched RISC-V Labs to give developers the resources they need to build and test their software, from porting existing projects to developing new components. Additionally, our members have helped to make development boards (SiFive Unmatched, Starfive VisionFive V2, BeagleV®-Ahead, Sophgo Pioneer Boxes, and QWERTY Embedded Design ICE-V) more accessible through the RISC-V Developer Boards program so more people can innovate with RISC-V.
3 – Showcasing the Latest Innovations at RISC-V Summit North America: The main message at RISC-V Summit North America was that “RISC-V is Here!” Demonstrating the continued growth of the RISC-V ecosystem, The SHD Group previewed the findings from its upcoming research report—stay tuned for more on that. With so many standout sessions, it’s hard to narrow them down, but here are a few more we wanted to highlight: Meta shared its use of RISC-V to develop cutting-edge video transcoders, inference accelerators, and training chips; Qualcomm highlighted that it hit a new milestone, shipping one billion devices with RISC-V microcontrollers; and Samsung discussed how the company is exploring the possibilities of RISC-V SoC design verification, and evaluating RISC-V application processors for the mobile market. Head to YouTube to watch the sessions from the main program, along with our RISC-V 101 presentations.
We also had a ton of RISC-V innovations on display in the Expo Hall and Developer Zone, giving attendees a look at cutting-edge products such as a RISC-V based smartwatch, tablet, laptop, remote control car, developer boards, and so much more.
The latest RISC-V products on display at RISC-V Summit North America
4 – Collaborating Together at RISC-V Summit Europe: Members of the RISC-V community from industry, government, research, and academia joined us in Barcelona, Spain to discuss how RISC-V is shaping the future of innovation. Speakers emphasized how RISC-V has “a very important economic impact in the European economy,” as Luis-Carlos Busquets-Perez, Administrator at the EU Commission, succinctly explained. Check out a recap of the event here.
5 – Gathering In-Person and Virtually for RISC-V Summit China: Did you know that RISC-V startups in China have raised over $1 billion USD? RISC-V innovation is thriving in China. RISC-V Summit China celebrated this momentum, by showcasing the latest RISC-V activities and progress across a wide variety of segments. With more than 2,000 registrants, RISC-V Summit China was the biggest event of 2023. You can read more here.
6 – Bringing More RISC-V Products to Market: The RISC-V ecosystem was certainly busy this year! Members introduced new RISC-V solutions for key vertical markets including aerospace, AI/ML, automotive, data center, embedded, HPC, and security. One testament to the rising adoption of RISC-V is that the RISC-V Exchange, a directory of RISC-V hardware and software solutions, saw an impressive 40% growth over the past year.
7 – Offering New RISC-V Educational Resources: The RISC-V Learn Online programs now include certification options so hardware and software professionals can continue to build their skills on RISC-V. We also launched RISC-V Technical Sessions to deep dive on various RISC-V technologies.
8 – Accelerating Industry Momentum: We’ve continued to see more participation in our special interest groups for Android, Automotive, Data Center, HPC, Academia, and multiple areas of security. To read about how Google and other community members have matured support for RISC-V in Android, please visit here.
9 – Building the RISC-V Community: Community and collaboration are at the heart of RISC-V’s success. RISC-V members actively participated in community-building activities including virtual RISC-V career fairs where students heard from professionals in many positions and fields to better understand what career progress looks like to get into individual roles. Students and job seekers had the opportunity to meet with top companies and explore job opportunities. If you missed these great opportunities, you can check out the RISC-V Careers page anytime to view new opportunities. Additionally, the RISC-V Mentorship Program paired mentors and project leaders together with mentees and interns to work together on all sorts of RISC-V initiatives. We also want to give a special shout-out to the 27 individuals this year who served as RISC-V Ambassadors and RISC-V Advocates to help grow and engage the RISC-V community.
10 – Testing Your Skills at Hackathons: There were several RISC-V hackathons this year, offering participants the chance to have fun and learn at the same time. One great example is the RISC-V Based Product Development Hackathon—put on by Digital India RISC-V, Krypton Solutions, and VLSI System Design (VSD)—where attendees ported 10 products to RISC-V in 24 hours. Read more details about the event here. Learners also had the opportunity to Capture the Bug in a 2-week Processor Design Verification hackathon to familiarize themselves with fundamentals of processor verification.
Thank you to all the RISC-V members across the globe for your support and collaboration over the past year. If you want to get more involved in the RISC-V community, check out the list of working groups and see what sparks your interest. You can also stay up-to-date about RISC-V events here. We look forward to achieving many more milestones in 2024