RISC-V Software News

August 2025 — Upstream Open Source Activity

The Big Picture

In August 2025, the RISC-V ecosystem saw 277 commits across 12 projects. LLVM (RISC-V) led with 172 commits (62%). Also active: GCC (RISC-V) (30), Linux Kernel (RISC-V) (25), QEMU (RISC-V) (9). Software support advanced for QC_INSB, QC_INSBI, Smctr, Ssctr, Zacas, Zicond, Zvbb, Zvbc. Most-discussed mailing list thread: "RISC-V: Don't generate R_RISCV_RELATIVE if symbol referenced section is SH_ABS" (Binutils (RISC-V), 8 replies).

RISC-V International

The spec repos saw 33 commits this month, led by ISA Manual with 32 commits.

Spec Repository Activity

RepositoryCommitsContributors
ISA Manual 32 12
ELF psABI 1 1

Linux Kernel (RISC-V)

25
Commits
14
Contributors
357
Lines Added
469
Lines Removed

Linux Kernel (RISC-V) saw moderate activity with 25 commits from 14 contributors. The codebase got leaner: +357/-469. Pu Lehui was the most active contributor with 9 commits. New feature work included 11 commits: "riscv: dts: thead: th1520: Add IMG BXM-4-64 GPU node"; "riscv: dts: spacemit: add UART resets for Soc K1". Platform and DT work accounted for 6 commits. Virtualisation work accounted for 3 patches, continuing to mature RISC-V KVM support. Interrupt controller infrastructure (AIA/APLIC/PLIC/IMSIC) received 3 patches.

11 New features & support 6 Device tree / platform support 3 KVM / Virtualisation 3 Interrupt controllers (AIA/APLIC/PLIC) 3 Bug fixes 2 ISA extensions 1 Cleanup & refactoring 1 Performance optimisations

Notable Changes

  • riscv, bpf: Add support arena atomics for RV64 (and 7 more) (fb7cefabae, Pu Lehui)
  • riscv: Separate toolchain support dependency from RISCV_ISA_ZACAS (ec74ae5662, Pu Lehui)
  • riscv: dts: spacemit: Add OrangePi RV2 board device tree (bab8dea259, Hendrik Hamerlinck)
  • riscv: dts: thead: th1520: Add IMG BXM-4-64 GPU node (5052d5cf13, Michal Wilczynski)
  • riscv: dts: thead: Add APB clocks for TH1520 GMACs (a7f75e2883, Yao Zi)
  • riscv: dts: spacemit: add UART resets for Soc K1 (eba84c94f9, Hendrik Hamerlinck)
  • kexec: enable CMA based contiguous allocation (07d2490297, Alexander Graf)
  • riscv: Remove ld.lld version checks from many TOOLCHAIN_HAS configs (and 2 more) (87b28d7139, Nathan Chancellor)
  • irqchip/sifive-plic: Use for_each_present_cpu() instead of for_each_cpu() (b92ff23b12, Fushuai Wang)
  • riscv: dts: starfive: jh7110-common: drop no-sdio property from mmc1 (481ee0fcbb, E Shattow)
  • irqchip/riscv-imsic: Don't dereference before NULL pointer check (cb9f6a4038, Thomas Gleixner)
  • RISC-V: KVM: Fix pte settings within kvm_riscv_gstage_ioremap() (9bca8be646, Fangyu Yu)
  • irqchip/sifive-plic: Respect mask state when setting affinity (adecf78df9, Inochi Amaoto)
  • RISC-V: KVM: Correct kvm_riscv_check_vcpu_requests() comment (e61a12a4ba, Quan Zhou)
  • RISC-V: KVM: fix stack overrun when loading vlenb (799766208f, Radim Krčmář)

Top Contributors

AuthorCommits
Pu Lehui9
Nathan Chancellor3
Hendrik Hamerlinck2
Radim Krčmář1
Quan Zhou1
Fangyu Yu1
Michal Wilczynski1
Inochi Amaoto1
Fushuai Wang1
E Shattow1

OpenSBI

7
Commits
5
Contributors
153
Lines Added
99
Lines Removed

OpenSBI saw lighter activity with 7 commits from 5 contributors.

2 Bug fixes 2 New features & support 1 Device tree / platform support

Notable Changes

  • dbtr: Add support for icount trigger type (4b687e3669, Jesse Taube)
  • generic: mips: support harts to boot from mips_warm_boot (1ffbd063c4, Chao-ying Fu)
  • platform: openpiton: Move openpiton platform from fpga to generic (525ac970b3, Manuel Hernández Méndez)
  • platform: generic: Pack the FDT after applying fixups (bbe9a23060, Samuel Holland)
  • dbtr: Fix sbi_dbtr_read_trig to read from CSRs (6a1f53bc2d, Jesse Taube)
  • lib: sbi: pmu: Improve loop in pmu_ctr_find_hw (3204d74486, Manuel Hernández Méndez)
  • Fix license to compatible BSD-2-Clause (6068efc7f5, Xiang W)

Top Contributors

AuthorCommits
Jesse Taube2
Manuel Hernández Méndez2
Chao-ying Fu1
Xiang W1
Samuel Holland1

Notable Discussions

QEMU (RISC-V)

9
Commits
1
Contributors
41
Lines Added
51
Lines Removed

Not the busiest month for QEMU (RISC-V): 9 commits. Most of the work came from Richard Henderson (9 of 9 commits, 100%).

Notable Changes

  • linux-user: Remove target_pt_regs from target_syscall.h (and 5 more) (3f1b9dbdf5, Richard Henderson)
  • semihosting: Retrieve stack top from image_info (05c84cf8df, Richard Henderson)
  • semihosting: Initialize heap once per process (7adf9ebb0a, Richard Henderson)
  • linux-user/riscv: Create init_main_thread (a56cf00bc0, Richard Henderson)

Top Contributors

AuthorCommits
Richard Henderson9

GCC (RISC-V)

30
Commits
13
Contributors
1444
Lines Added
350
Lines Removed

A steady month for GCC (RISC-V) with 30 commits from 13 contributors. Top contributor: Jeff Law with 7 commits. Compiler backend and code generation improvements accounted for 12 commits. RVV work continued with 7 commits touching vector-related code. New feature work included 7 commits: "RISC-V: Add patterns for vector-scalar IEEE floating-point min"; "RISC-V: Add pattern for vector-scalar floating-point min". Bug fixes accounted for 4 commits (13%).

12 Compiler backend / code generation 7 Vector extension (RVV) 7 New features & support 4 Bug fixes 3 Cleanup & refactoring 2 ISA extensions

Notable Changes

  • RISC-V: MIPS prefetch extensions for MIPS RV64 P8700 and can be enabled with xmipscbop. (ef5f0e9c51, Umesh Kalappa)
  • RISC-V: Add patterns for vector-scalar IEEE floating-point min (and 3 more) (79e0dbf1c4, Paul-Antoine Arras)
  • RISC-V: Expand const_vector with 2 elts per pattern. (980e1fc195, Robin Dapp)
  • Improve initial code generation for addsi/adddi (1b5b461428, Shreya Munnangi)
  • RISC-V: Replace deprecated FUNCTION_VALUE/LIBCALL_VALUE macros with target hooks (and 2 more) (d914cb6743, Kito Cheng)
  • [RISC-V][PR target/121531] Cover missing insn types in p400 and p600 scheduler models (07b74430df, Jeff Law)
  • RISC-V: Combine vec_duplicate + vnmsac.vv to vnmsac.vx on GR2VR cost (and 6 more) (44054e6206, Pan Li)
  • [PR target/119275][RISC-V] Avoid calling gen_lowpart in cases where it would ICE (44cd33881f, Jeff Law)
  • RTEMS: Add riscv multilibs (73a2a9d6c2, Sebastian Huber)
  • [RISC-V][PR target/121548] Avoid bogus index into recog operand cache (25bbc0f20a, Jeff Law)
  • [RISC-V][PR target/121113] Handle HFmode in various insn reservations (2e2589616a, Jeff Law)
  • RISC-V: fix __builtin_round clobbering FP exceptions flags [PR121534] (f5696e9b11, Vineet Gupta)
  • [PATCH] RISC-V: Fix block matching in arch-canonicalize [PR121538] (14b15a9a47, Dimitar Dimitrov)
  • RISC-V: Allow errors to be suppressed when parsing architectures (84628fdbe5, Richard Sandiford)
  • [PR target/121213] Avoid unnecessary constant load in amoswap (6f63044a7a, Austin Law)

Top Contributors

AuthorCommits
Jeff Law7
Pan Li7
Paul-Antoine Arras4
Kito Cheng3
Sebastian Huber1
Austin Law1
Dimitar Dimitrov1
Vineet Gupta1
Umesh Kalappa1
Richard Sandiford1

LLVM (RISC-V)

172
Commits
44
Contributors
61955
Lines Added
6391
Lines Removed

LLVM (RISC-V) saw heavy activity with 172 commits from 44 contributors. A hefty +61,955/-6,391 line diff. Leading the charge was Craig Topper with 49 commits. New feature work included 55 commits: "[RISCV] Add computeKnownBitsForTargetNode for RISCVISD::SRAW. (#156191)"; "[RISCV] Add test coverage for reassociation with poison generating flags". The compiler backend saw heavy activity with 33 commits touching code generation. Work on QC_INSB, QC_INSBI, Smctr, Ssctr, Zicond, Zvbb accounted for 22 commits.

55 New features & support 53 Cleanup & refactoring 33 Compiler backend / code generation 22 ISA extensions 9 Vector extension (RVV) 8 Performance optimisations 5 Bug fixes 1 Interrupt controllers (AIA/APLIC/PLIC)

Notable Changes

  • [CodeGen][RISCV] Add support of RISCV nontemporal to vector predication instructions. (#153033) (658a931c5b, daniel-trujillo-bsc)
  • [RISCV] Add SpacemiT XSMTVDot (SpacemiT Vector Dot Product) extension. (#151706) (6842cc5562, 林克)
  • [RISCV] Add MC support for P extensions with scalar second operands. (#153502) (cba5f1b6c1, Craig Topper)
  • [RISCV][VLOPT] Added support for several vector crypto instructions (#153071) (d455d45654, Mikhail R. Gadelha)
  • [RISCV] Add MC support for more P extension instructions. (#153629) (e2eaea412a, Craig Topper)
  • [RISCV] Add MC support for more P extension instructions. (#153458) (ace08d5ccf, Craig Topper)
  • [RISCV] Implement MC support for Zvfbfa extension (#151106) (717771e13d, Jim Lin)
  • [RISCV] Add Tied operands to insert instructions in Qualcomm uC extension Xqcibm (#151339) (d1b363e0b0, quic_hchandel)
  • [RISCV][VLOPT] Added support for the zvbc and the remaining zvbb instructions (#153234) (489a41d474, Mikhail R. Gadelha)
  • Revert "[RISCV][TTI] Implement getAddressComputationCost() in RISCV TTI." (#155535) (69db050839, Elvis Wang)
  • [RISCV] Add CodeGen support for qc.insbi and qc.insb insert instructions (#152447) (71b066e3a2, quic_hchandel)
  • [RISCV] Add missing check lines for vwmulu_v64i32 in fixed-vectors-vwmulu.ll. NFC (296163f85d, Jim Lin)
  • [RISCV][llvm] Support fixed-length vector inline assembly constraints (#150724) (98f4b7797e, Brandon Wu)
  • [RISCV] Add intrinsics for strided segment stores with fixed vectors (#152038) (c065ed3912, Min-Yih Hsu)
  • [RISCV] Add intrinsics for strided segment loads with fixed vectors (#151611) (401e72c830, Min-Yih Hsu)

Top Contributors

AuthorCommits
Craig Topper49
Fangrui Song13
Philip Reames11
Jim Lin10
Min-Yih Hsu10
Luke Lau7
Mikhail R. Gadelha7
Sam Elliott6
Nikita Popov6
Sudharsan Veeravalli4

Binutils (RISC-V)

5
Commits
2
Contributors
54
Lines Added
62
Lines Removed

Not the busiest month for Binutils (RISC-V): 5 commits from 2 contributors. Jan Beulich was the driving force, authoring 3 of 5 commits (60%).

Notable Changes

  • RISC-V: PR33216, Allow c.slli, c.srai, c.srli with 0 immediate as a hint (28520d7eed, Nelson Chu)
  • RISC-V: PR33216, Fixed gcc testcases failed for commit 28520d7 (cb4ed2bee7, Nelson Chu)
  • bfd/ELF/RISC-V: make one local array static and several const (608c6df447, Jan Beulich)
  • opcodes/riscv: make riscv_options[] const (f67b2bc9d9, Jan Beulich)
  • ld: drop bogus %F format modifiers (deefd61637, Jan Beulich)

Top Contributors

AuthorCommits
Jan Beulich3
Nelson Chu2

GDB (RISC-V)

2
Commits
2
Contributors
47
Lines Added
13
Lines Removed

GDB (RISC-V) was quiet this month with 2 commits from 2 contributors. Code housekeeping was a significant theme at 1 commit (50%).

1 New features & support 1 Cleanup & refactoring

Notable Changes

  • gdb/record: Support wfi, sfence.vma, sret and mret instructions in risc-v (a784750d16, timurgol007)
  • gdb: rename gdbarch_software_single_step -> gdbarch_get_next_pcs (1d5f884e50, Simon Marchi)

Top Contributors

AuthorCommits
timurgol0071
Simon Marchi1

U-Boot (RISC-V)

8
Commits
4
Contributors
336
Lines Added
23
Lines Removed

Not the busiest month for U-Boot (RISC-V): 8 commits from 4 contributors. Michal Simek was the most active contributor with 4 commits. Interrupt controller infrastructure (AIA/APLIC/PLIC/IMSIC) received 1 patch.

3 New features & support 2 Bug fixes 2 Device tree / platform support 1 Interrupt controllers (AIA/APLIC/PLIC)

Notable Changes

  • riscv: board: Add Andes Voyager board Kconfig support (87f98d9225, Leo Yu-Chi Liang)
  • riscv: cpu: Use CONFIG_IS_ENABLED(CPU) instead of plain ifdef (c64fc632a8, Michal Simek)
  • riscv: dts: andes: Add Voyager device tree (a25e1aacdb, Leo Yu-Chi Liang)
  • xilinx: mbv: Use separate DTB for binman nodes (and 2 more) (87bd5806e6, Michal Simek)
  • arch/riscv/lib: update memmove and memcpy for big-endian (35d6caad6d, Ben Dooks)
  • starfive: fix return code of `mac write_eeprom` (909ceacf4a, Heinrich Schuchardt)

Top Contributors

AuthorCommits
Michal Simek4
Leo Yu-Chi Liang2
Ben Dooks1
Heinrich Schuchardt1

Rust (RISC-V)

6
Commits
4
Contributors
128
Lines Added
36
Lines Removed

Rust (RISC-V) saw lighter activity with 6 commits from 4 contributors.

4 New features & support

Notable Changes

  • Add new Tier-3 target: riscv64a23-unknown-linux-gnu (a4cf5e9eca, Chen Zhongyao)
  • Update src/doc/rustc/src/platform-support/riscv64a23-unknown-linux-gnu.md (93a8c1d12c, zhongyao)
  • compiler: Add `{x86_64,aarch64,riscv64gc}-unknown-managarm-mlibc` targets (6577a0ffdb, no92)
  • Add target page for riscv64a23-unknown-linux-gnu (31ae666f0f, Zhongyao Chen)
  • change riscv64a23 target reqirements comments: linux kernel 6.8.0, glibc 2.39 (224fd13a9c, Zhongyao Chen)
  • remove rva23s64 from riscv64a23-unknown-linux-gnu target (ce07b5d3fc, Zhongyao Chen)

Top Contributors

AuthorCommits
Zhongyao Chen3
no921
zhongyao1
Chen Zhongyao1

OpenOCD (RISC-V)

7
Commits
4
Contributors
133
Lines Added
13
Lines Removed

A quieter month for OpenOCD (RISC-V), with 7 commits from 4 contributors. Top contributor: Marc Schink with 4 commits.

3 New features & support 1 Bug fixes

Notable Changes

  • jtag/drivers: Add support for CH347-based JTAG adapters (7d0e125896, EasyDevKits)
  • flash/nor: Add support for Artery devices (ef188a30ac, Marc Schink)
  • doc/openocd.texi: add entry describing atsamv user signature area (61d1d13a02, Michal Lenc)
  • helper/log: Rework 'debug_level' command (374a1f9983, Marc Schink)
  • drivers/ch347, doc: warn about CH347T problems (99cb670bec, Tomas Vanek)
  • adapter/cmsis-dap: Fix 'usb interface' command (727c0d46e3, Marc Schink)
  • target: Use 'bool' data type in mmu() (325e6d38b5, Marc Schink)

Top Contributors

AuthorCommits
Marc Schink4
Michal Lenc1
Tomas Vanek1
EasyDevKits1

OpenBLAS (RISC-V)

4
Commits
3
Contributors
908
Lines Added
101
Lines Removed

A light month for OpenBLAS (RISC-V) with 4 commits from 3 contributors. Optimisation efforts accounted for 1 commit.

1 New features & support 1 Performance optimisations

Notable Changes

  • Add and use vectorized packing to ZVL128B and ZVL256B. Up to 3x+ faster than generic scalar functions. (c00afc86a6, Chip Kerchner)
  • riscv64: optimize gemv_t_vector.c (c2cc7a3602, yuanjia)
  • Disable vectorized packing for DGEMM - since it is slower than scalar. (64401b4417, Chip Kerchner)
  • disable fp16 flags on RISC-V unless BUILD_HFLOAT16=1 (ce79fe12fd, Mark Ryan)

Top Contributors

AuthorCommits
Chip Kerchner2
Mark Ryan1
yuanjia1

Linux Kernel Docs & DT (RISC-V)

2
Commits
2
Contributors
19
Lines Added
0
Lines Removed

Minimal activity in Linux Kernel Docs & DT (RISC-V): 2 commits from 2 contributors.

2 New features & support 2 Device tree / platform support 1 ISA extensions

Notable Changes

  • dt-bindings: riscv: Add SiFive vendor extensions description (cb69daf085, Nick Hu)
  • dt-bindings: riscv: spacemit: Add OrangePi RV2 board (f10512e2c4, Hendrik Hamerlinck)

Top Contributors

AuthorCommits
Hendrik Hamerlinck1
Nick Hu1