RVA23 Profile, a major release for the RISC-V software ecosystem, has been ratified, and it’s expected to help accelerate widespread implementation among toolchains and operating systems. Before ratification, it underwent a lengthy development, review, and approval process across numerous working groups. RVA23 Profile has now received the final ratification vote by the RISC-V Board of Directors.
RISC-V has more than 80 technical working groups that collectively advance the RISC-V ISA capabilities. They aim is to address the need for portability across vendors with standard ISA Profiles for applications and systems software.
RVA Profiles—which align implementations of RISC-V 64-bit application processors running rich operating system (OS) stacks from standard binary OS distributions—are crucial for software portability across many hardware implementations and thus help avoid vendor lock-in.
Each Profile specifies which ISA features are mandatory or optional, providing a common target for software developers. Mandatory extensions are assumed to be present, while optional extensions can be discovered at runtime and leveraged by optimized middleware, libraries, and applications.
“Profiles are the foundations of application and systems software portability across RISC-V implementations,” said Andrea Gallo, VP of technology at RISC-V International. “A large software ecosystem is only possible with a standard Profile for software vendors to target and within which multiple suppliers can work together.”
Vector extension and hypervisor extension are key components of the RVA23 Profile. Vector extension, which aims to accelerate math-intensive workloads such as AI/ML, cryptography, and compression/decompression, is critical for better performance in mobile and computing applications. RVA23 is the baseline requirement for the Android RISC-V ABI.
Next, hypervisor extension enables virtualization for enterprise workloads in both on-premises server and cloud computing applications. That, in turn, accelerates the development of RISC-V-based enterprise hardware, operating systems, and software workloads.
An Omdia research forecasts that RISC-V processors will account for almost a quarter of the global market by 2030. Then, there is a statement from Calista Redmond, CEO of RISC-V International, which claims that the RISC-V community has grown tremendously to more than 16,000 engineers worldwide.
The ratification of the RVA23 Profile is expected to aid RISC-V’s community growth as it will enable software vendors to successfully sell their software and services on a wide variety of RISC-V products.
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