RISC-V on the software front made very nice progress over the past year with a lot of Linux kernel and toolchain improvements, new targets being enabled, and new instructions being supported along with other additions for improving the overall RISC-V software ecosystem. When it comes to hardware though most of the readily available RISC-V systems are painstakingly slow and the more performant/featureful options are much harder to come by.
Below is a look at the most popular RISC-V news for 2024 on Phoronix for looking back at the progress made over the year. It sadly hasn’t been too interesting on the hardware side for performance benchmarking with widely available options like the VisionFive 2 being much slower than Raspberry Pi boards. The delayed SiFive HiFive Premier P550 is now reportedly shipping albeit the company hasn’t been helpful in any review samples like with their past hardware launches for help showcasing the potential there for that RISC-V board. Over on the Milk-V side with some higher core count options there has also been repeated delays in seeing actual hardware. And then the other options available also tend to be on the slower side with no real selling points besides for those specifically seeking on bare metal RISC-V hardware. Hopefully this improves in 2025.
Rust-Based Redox OS Gets RISC-V Working, Also Now Booting On The Raspberry Pi 4
The Redox OS open-source Rust-based operating system project is out with their newest monthly development update.
GhostWrite Vulnerability Affects RISC-V CPU, Mitigating Takes A ~77% Performance Hit
Security researchers with the CISPA Helmholtz Center for Information Security have disclosed GhostWrite, a new CPU vulnerability affecting a common RISC-V processor.
Ubuntu Talks Up A RISC-V Octa-Core Laptop
Ubuntu maker Canonical put out a news release today around the DC-ROMA RISC-V Laptop II that is an octa-core RISC-V laptop shipping soon with Ubuntu Linux.
Linux Preparing Support For The RISC-V Framework Laptop 13
Back in June it was teased that Framework Computer in collaboration with DeepComputing would be releasing a RISC-V motherboard for the Framework Laptop 13. That RISC-V laptop motherboard has yet to be officially released but Linux kernel patches were posted today for enabling the DeviceTree support so Linux can boot on this upcoming board.
Framework Laptop 13 To See A RISC-V Motherboard Option
Framework Computer Inc announced today that they have been working with DeepComputing on a partner-developed RISC-V motherboard for the Framework Laptop 13.
Linux 6.8 To Add Support For The AMD MicroBlaze V Soft-Core RISC-V Processor
A few months back AMD announced the MicroBlaze V processor as a soft-core RISC-V processor for embedded system use. With Linux 6.8 the necessary DeviceTree support is landing for the AMD MicroBlaze V.
NVIDIA Shipping Around One Billion RISC-V Cores In Their 2024 Products
Going back to 2016 we’ve known of NVIDIA beginning to use RISC-V to replace their Falcon micro-controller and other micro-controllers within their graphics processors to using this common open-source ISA. That use has continued to grow and an unofficial estimate now puts it at around one billion RISC-V cores shipping in 2024 NVIDIA chips.
Hangover Aiming For RISC-V Support This Year, x86_64 Emulation
Building off this week’s release of Wine 9.0 for running Windows games and applications on Linux and other platforms is now Hangover 9.0. Hangover as a reminder is the project based on Wine initially focused on running x86 32-bit Windows apps on AArch64 Linux. Hangover works by running Wine atop various emulators such as QEMU, FEX, or Box64 for handling the processor/ISA translation.
dav1d 1.4 Released With More AVX-512 Optimizations, RISC-V & LoongArch CPU Support
While recent graphics cards support GPU-accelerated AV1 video decoding, for those still relying on dav1d for CPU-based AV1 decode there is now version 1.4 “Road Runner” available that adds support for LoongArch and RISC-V architectures while continuing to further enhance the performance of this open-source AV1 decoder on x86_64 Intel/AMD processors too.
SiFive HiFive Premier P550 Announced As New RISC-V Developer Board
Since SiFive ceased production of the HiFive Unleashed developer board we’ve been clamoring for a new and more powerful RISC-V developer board… Today SiFive announced the HiFive Premier P550 as a new developer system offering that will be available this summer.
Linux 6.9 To Allow RISC-V Kernel Builds With Clang Link-Time Optimizations
Adding to the list of features slated for the upcoming Linux 6.9 cycle is allowing RISC-V kernel builds to be compiled with Clang Link-Time Optimizations (LTO) enabled.
Linux 6.9 Adds New RISC-V Vector-Accelerated Crypto Routines
The RISC-V architecture updates were sent out today for the in-development Linux 6.9 kernel ahead of the v6.9-rc1 release this Sunday.
Linux 6.10 Released With New Panthor Graphics Driver, Radeon Display Support On RISC-V
As anticipated the Linux 6.10 kernel was released as stable a few minutes ago by Linus Torvalds.
RISC-V With Linux 6.8 Restores XIP Kernel Support
With Linus Torvalds back to work, merged to mainline on Wednesday were the RISC-V architecture updates for the in-development Linux 6.8 kernel cycle.
Linux Patches Posted For Enabling A 22 x 35 mm RISC-V / ARM Board
Linux kernel patches were posted today for enabling Linux to boot on the LicheeRV Nano, a mini single board computer that comes in at a mere 22.86 x 35.56 mm. As interesting as the size with this SBC is the Sophgo SG2002 SoC that features a mix of RISC-V and ARM cores.
RISC-V Motherboard For Framework 13 Pricing Starts At $368 In Early Access, $928 For Laptop
Framework Computer has been promoting a RISC-V motherboard option for their Framework Laptop 13 to complement their existing Intel Core and AMD Ryzen motherboard options. This RISC-V motherboard is being developed in cooperation with DeepComputing. Early access pricing and more details on this quad-core StarFive JH7110 powered mainboard for the Framework 13 have now been announced.
RISC-V Adding Kernel-Mode FPU For Linux 6.10 To Enable Recent AMD Display Support
With the upcoming Linux 6.10 kernel cycle, the RISC-V architecture code is seeing kernel-mode FPU. This kernel floating point support is needed for the AMDGPU kernel graphics driver and particular its DCN display code. In turn this should allow recent AMD Radeon graphics cards to work on RISC-V with display support using the company’s open-source driver stack.
RISC-V Memory Hot Plugging To Be Introduced With Linux 6.11
The RISC-V kernel port with Linux 6.11 is introducing the ability to handle memory hot plugging/unplugging.
RISC-V Now Supports Rust In The Linux Kernel
The latest RISC-V port updates have been merged for the in-development Linux 6.10 kernel.
SiFive HiFive Premier P550 RISC-V Development Board Update
Earlier this year SiFive announced the HiFive Premier P550 RISC-V development board with plans for shipping in July. That timeframe for shipping since passed but SiFive today issued a new update on their RISC-V development board.
SiFive Announces P870-D For Up To 256 RISC-V Cores
SiFive today lifted the lid on the P870-D, its new RISC-V processor dor data center and AI workloads. The P870-D is designed to scale up to 256 cores while supporting modern features like CXL and other AI/HPC minded features.
Linux 6.10 On RISC-V Allows Configurable Boot Image Compression
A few days ago with the main RISC-V architecture pull for Linux 6.10 was enabling Rust support within the kernel for this ISA as well as other additions. A secondary set of RISC-V changes have been merged as well ahead of the Linux 6.10 merge window closing this weekend.
RISC-V Changes For Linux 6.13 Deliver Pointer Masking In User-Space
The RISC-V CPU port updates have been sent out for the in-development Linux 6.13 kernel.
Newer AMD Radeon Graphics Cards Now Work On RISC-V With Linux 6.10
Andrew Morton sent out more patches on Wednesday that have been pulled into the Linux 6.10 kernel. Notable from this latest round of “non-MM” updates is enabling more compiler warnings by default and getting newer AMD GPUs working on the RISC-V architecture.
RISC-V Sees Support For New ISA Extensions In Linux 6.11
Palmer Dabbelt on Saturday sent out the RISC-V architecture updates for the ongoing Linux 6.11 merge window.
Redox OS Making Progress On RISC-V Support, Eyes QEMU & Neovim Ports
The Redox OS open-source Rust-written operating system project has published their September 2024 status update.
Thanks Intel: RISC-V Sees NUMA Support For ACPI-Based Systems In Linux 6.11
The mainline RISC-V Linux kernel port continues to become more featureful each kernel cycle… Last week for the start of the Linux 6.11 merge window there were new RISC-V ISA extensions wired up while in ending out the v6.11 merge window this weekend there is yet more enablement activity.
Alpine Linux 3.20 Released With Initial 64-bit RISC-V Support
Alpine Linux 3.20 has been released as the newest feature release to this security-minded, lightweight Linux distribution that is popular for embedded and container use. Alpine Linux continues to set itself apart from others by making use of musl libc, Busybox, and other modifications in the name of security and small footprint.
StarFive RISC-V SoC’s Camera Subsystem Driver Added To Linux 6.8
Sent in last week were all of the media driver updates for Linux 6.8. Arguably most notable is the introduction of the StarFive Camera Subsystem driver as a new image sensor processor driver initially being treated as a staging driver.
FEX 2409 Highlights Some Of The Challenges Of Emulating x86 On RISC-V
FEX 2409 has been released for this open-source project that’s known for allowing x86_64 Linux binaries — including both games and applications — to run rather well on AArch64. It’s also been working on enabling x86_64 programs on RISC-V but there due to architectural differences it’s more of a challenge than with ARM.
