The Future of Operating Systems on RISC-V

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Alex Bradbury gives an overview of the status and development of RISC-V as it relates to modern operating systems, highlighting major research strands, controversies, and opportunities to get involved.



#OperatingSystems #Hardware #Infrastructure

[elahn_i]

One of the best RISC-V talks I've seen. Thanks, Alex!

[capability-snob]

Phew, I was surprised when looking at the common extensions that there is no such spec for the MMU, so it's great that there is this SBI thing. There's so many microcontrollers in the space, but few general purpose CPUs. I'm a bit let down that this talk completely glossed over the CHERI clones, but I get the impression it was mostly outside his wheelhouse. It's actually what i wanted to hear more about when clicking the thumbnail, as CHERI is a genuine quantum leap.

[heater]

So what we need here is a Linux running RISC V based board in the style of the Raspberry Pi.
Is that concept a thing on some agenda somewhere given the links between Lowrisc and the Raspberry Pi ?

[aliuzel]

I am curious to know about serialized TileLink.

[carlfarrington]

Kendryte K210 is available already with AI acceleration, loads of RAM and flash, 400MHz, dual RISC-V cores. You can buy a SiPeed development board for $20 and micropython runs on it already.
Gigadevices just launched their MCU too. Expect to see that in a lot of Chinese stuff in future, especially with Trump restricting Chinese access to American technology - Arm is going to suffer badly. I suppose the next big thing would be a HiSilicon RISC-V based SoC.

[weavingcode]

Wish there was a OpenFirmware boot loader?

[regal_]

Does RISC V bring with it a potential for cross platform implementaions of softwares and programs? So we write a piece of code (in C/C++ lets say) and it can run on any OS/kernel? Because that would be sick. But sad case for Java developers though, because that language would become obsolete imo.

[lesliedellow]

The problem with people being able to add their own instructions is that the "standard" will disintegrate into dozens of "standards". That may not matter for embedded applications, but it will never be able to drive a PC, where software houses expect to be able to develop for a standard, and mostly unchanging, architecture.

[crhu]

HarveyOS and HelenOS may be the next Linux story. Microkernels were catching on just when Linux ate everything in the 90s.

[rallokkcaz]

Reduced instruction set, says adding more instructions is totally fine. Pick one?