RISC-V announced it has ratified the RVA23 standard, improving software portability, virtualization, and math-intensive operations.

RISC-V is the open semiconductor platform designed to compete with the Arm chips. The platform is gaining in popularity, offering organizations a customizable option without the licensing fees that come with using Arm. The latest development, ratifying the RVA23 profile standard, is an important step to further RISC-V adoption.

RVA Profiles align implementations of RISC-V 64-bit application processors that will run rich operating systems (OS) stacks from standard binary OS distributions. RVA Profiles are essential to software portability across many hardware implementations and help to avoid vendor lock-in. The newly ratified RVA23 Profile is a major release for the RISC-V software ecosystem and will help accelerate widespread implementation among toolchains and operating systems.

RISC-V International, the nonprofit that stewards the RISC-V instruction set, said RVA23 will improve the platform in a couple of critical ways.

• Vector Extension: The Vector extension accelerates math-intensive workloads, including AI/ML, cryptography, and compression / decompression. Vector extensions yield better performance in mobile and computing applications with RVA23 as the baseline requirement for the Android RISC-V ABI.
• Hypervisor Extension: The Hypervisor extension will enable virtualization for enterprise workloads in both on-premises server and cloud computing applications. This will accelerate the development of RISC-V-based enterprise hardware, operating systems, and software workloads. The Hypervisor extension will also provide better security for mobile applications by separating secure and non-secure components.

“Profiles are the foundations of application and systems software portability across RISC-V implementations. A large software ecosystem is only possible with a standard Profile for software vendors to target and within which multiple suppliers can work together,” said Andrea Gallo, Vice President of Technology at RISC-V International. “Software vendors need portability to reduce their development and maintenance costs and enable them to successfully sell their software and services on a wide variety of RISC-V products. The ratification of RVA23 makes this happen.”

“The RISC-V community has grown tremendously to more than 16,000 engineers around the world. The focus, collaboration, and investment of our members has truly formed the bedrock of computing for generations to come. RISC-V’s open standard is now propelling innovation across industries and implementations. Today’s announcement is a great milestone and further positions the RISC-V ISA as the future of computing,” said Calista Redmond, CEO of RISC-V International.

With growing support for the platform, the ratification of RVA23 the profile standard is good news for RISC-V and should help further adoption.