Author: Isaac Chute, Director of Software Ecosystem, RISC-V International
Historically there have been many iterations of compute platforms, such as Alpha, Vax, Solaris, PA-RISC, x86, PPC, and s390, to mention but a few. The success of each of these platforms has been greatly determined by the richness of the software ecosystem that developed for them. There’s no point in having a Ferrari if you can’t do something meaningful with it! Traditionally there has been a natural antagonistic relationship between software and hardware. Sometimes hardware was enabled to support many new earth-shattering features which however was a moot point as the software to unlock the magic was non-existent at that point in their evolution. That is why when bringing up a new architecture it is so important to ensure that both the hardware and software ecosystems grow both in tandem and in proportion to each other to ensure a robust execution environment upon which enterprise shops can solve their business problems.
The term “Software Ecosystem” can mean a myriad of things to different audiences depending on their perspectives, expectations, and needs. For instance, the software ecosystem needs of an SoC vendor, an OS vendor, versus an application vendor, versus an Enterprise Datacenter shop, can differ greatly as their needs are determined by their position within the software execution spectrum. As part of the RISC-V enablement effort, we need to address the needs of the entire software execution stack.
Therefore, we here within the RISC-V International team, together with our members, have made the enablement of the software ecosystem one of our top priorities. To that end, we have created an Enterprise Software Ecosystem Enablement Dashboard where we are tracking the development of the top applications and software components that are pivotal to the success of a robust software ecosystem that will meet end customer needs. This is the first release of this list which isn’t absolutely definitive, but gives a useful insight into the current status of RISC-V software enablement. Over time this list is going to be expanded to cover all of the important software applications that are required to build out a healthy and robust software ecosystem.
Using the dashboard you can explore the status of a range of software projects, including operating systems, browsers, software toolchains, hypervisors, web servers and more. The dashboard is now live at: https://tech.riscv.org/software-ecosystem
We hope you find it a useful tool to understand and explore the RISC-V software ecosystem.
If you have suggestions around applications that should be considered for future inclusion please submit a request to: https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSd8bcGfoXZjYfGVgZCk6xHiJibylRKDehVbJLAGSVd5UDAlbQ/viewform