RISC-V Software News

September 2025 — Upstream Open Source Activity

The Big Picture

September 2025 saw 403 commits land across 12 tracked projects. The most active projects were LLVM (RISC-V) (172), Linux Kernel (RISC-V) (121), GCC (RISC-V) (49). Software support advanced for QC_E_LI, Zaamo, Zalrsc, Zfh, Zfhmin, Zibi, Zicbom, Zicbop. Virtualisation saw 19 KVM-related patches. Most-discussed mailing list thread: "RISC-V: Allow VLS types using up to LMUL 8" (GCC (RISC-V), 21 replies).

RISC-V International

The spec repos saw 27 commits this month, led by ISA Manual with 21 commits.

Spec Repository Activity

RepositoryCommitsContributors
ISA Manual 21 9
Profiles 4 1
ELF psABI 2 1

Linux Kernel (RISC-V)

121
Commits
50
Contributors
4240
Lines Added
1079
Lines Removed

It was a busy month in Linux Kernel (RISC-V) land, with 121 commits from 50 contributors. Top contributor: Nam Cao with 12 commits. New feature work included 50 commits: "RISC-V: Enable GPIO keyboard and event device in RV64 defconfig"; "irqchip/riscv-rpmi-sysmsi: Add ACPI support". Board and device tree support got 30 commits. KVM and virtualisation received 19 patches. Work on Zfh, Zfhmin, Zicbom, Zicbop, Zicboz accounted for 10 commits.

50 New features & support 30 Device tree / platform support 19 KVM / Virtualisation 10 ISA extensions 6 Bug fixes 6 Performance optimisations 4 Interrupt controllers (AIA/APLIC/PLIC) 3 Cleanup & refactoring

Notable Changes

  • RISC-V: KVM: add support for FWFT SBI extension (6b72fd1705, Clément Léger)
  • riscv: dts: spacemit: Add Ethernet support for Jupiter (and 2 more) (e32dc7a936, Vivian Wang)
  • riscv: Add __attribute_const__ to ffs()-family implementations (c51c26e687, Kees Cook)
  • riscv: defconfig: Enable MMP_PDMA support for SpacemiT K1 SoC (3df7ce0e43, Guodong Xu)
  • RISC-V: KVM: Add support for SBI_FWFT_POINTER_MASKING_PMLEN (6f576fc0ae, Samuel Holland)
  • RISC-V: Add defines for the SBI message proxy extension (508da38677, Anup Patel)
  • RISC-V: KVM: add support for SBI_FWFT_MISALIGNED_DELEG (bb053f816a, Clément Léger)
  • riscv: hwprobe: Add MIPS vendor extension probing (bb4b0f8a1b, Aleksa Paunovic)
  • riscv: dts: add initial support for EIC7700 SoC (3329e2f3b5, Min Lin)
  • bpf, x86: Add support for signed arena loads (a91ae3c893, Kumar Kartikeya Dwivedi)
  • riscv: Add xmipsexectl as a vendor extension (a8fed1bc03, Aleksa Paunovic)
  • irqchip/riscv-rpmi-sysmsi: Add ACPI support (4752b0cfbc, Sunil V L)
  • riscv: dts: allwinner: d1s-t113: Add pinctrl's required by NetCube Systems Nagami SoM (cbce6d5326, Lukas Schmid)
  • riscv: dts: starfive: add Milk-V Mars CM Lite system-on-module (and 6 more) (4cce8b2503, E Shattow)
  • RISC-V: KVM: Implement ONE_REG interface for SBI FWFT state (and 4 more) (48d67106f4, Anup Patel)

Top Contributors

AuthorCommits
Nam Cao12
Anup Patel8
Atish Patra8
Alexandre Ghiti7
E Shattow7
Sunil V L5
Quan Zhou4
Valentina Fernandez4
Radim Krčmář4
Aleksa Paunovic3

OpenSBI

10
Commits
3
Contributors
196
Lines Added
246
Lines Removed

OpenSBI saw lighter activity with 10 commits from 3 contributors. The codebase got leaner: +196/-246. Most of the work came from Samuel Holland (6 of 10 commits, 60%). The interrupt subsystem got 1 patch of attention this month. On the mailing list, "lib: utils: Add cache flush library (2-patch series)" drew 17 replies.

2 New features & support 1 Interrupt controllers (AIA/APLIC/PLIC)

Notable Changes

  • lib: sbi_list: Add a helper for reverse list iteration (64a38525e6, Samuel Holland)
  • lib: sbi: Introduce IPI device rating (ee92afa638, Anup Patel)
  • lib: utils/reset: Hang the hart after RPMI system reset message (17b8d1900d, Rahul Pathak)
  • lib: sbi_hart: Do not call delegate_traps() in the resume flow (f04ae48263, Samuel Holland)
  • lib: sbi_hsm: Save mideleg across non-retentive suspend (55135abcd5, Samuel Holland)
  • lib: utils/ipi: Convert IPI drivers as early drivers (cb70dffa0a, Anup Patel)
  • include: sbi: Remove platform specific IPI init (85f22b38c8, Anup Patel)
  • lib: sbi_hsm: Use 64-bit CSR macro for menvcfg (d9afef57b7, Samuel Holland)
  • lib: sbi_heap: Allocate list nodes dynamically (8dcd1448e7, Samuel Holland)
  • lib: sbi_heap: Simplify allocation algorithm (153cdeea53, Samuel Holland)

Top Contributors

AuthorCommits
Samuel Holland6
Anup Patel3
Rahul Pathak1

QEMU (RISC-V)

7
Commits
3
Contributors
27
Lines Added
24
Lines Removed

QEMU (RISC-V) saw lighter activity with 7 commits from 3 contributors. Top contributor: Pierrick Bouvier with 4 commits.

1 New features & support

Notable Changes

  • bsd-user, linux-user: introduce qemu_process_cpu_events (758e5de501, Paolo Bonzini)
  • semihosting/arm-compat-semi: change common_semi_sys_exit_extended (a92e151bd0, Pierrick Bouvier)
  • linux-user: Populate sigreturn_region_{start,end} in all vdso.S (b9baf09512, Richard Henderson)
  • target/{arm, riscv}/common-semi-target: eradicate target_ulong (632308c591, Pierrick Bouvier)
  • target/riscv/common-semi-target: remove sizeof(target_ulong) (2131f0dcdf, Pierrick Bouvier)
  • include/semihosting/common-semi: extract common_semi API (9e65902904, Pierrick Bouvier)
  • target/riscv: Record misa_ext in TCGTBCPUState.cs_base (55b490b58f, Richard Henderson)

Top Contributors

AuthorCommits
Pierrick Bouvier4
Richard Henderson2
Paolo Bonzini1

GCC (RISC-V)

49
Commits
17
Contributors
3218
Lines Added
600
Lines Removed

GCC (RISC-V) had a solid month with 49 commits from 17 contributors. Paul-Antoine Arras was the most active contributor with 10 commits. New feature work included 21 commits: "fmv: c++: Add check_target_clone hook for filtering target_clone versions."; "RISC-V: Add missing define_insn_reservation to tt-ascalon-d8.md [PR121982]". Vector extension support moved forward with 16 commits. Compiler backend and code generation improvements accounted for 15 commits. ISA extension work spanned 9 commits, touching Zicsr. Worth reading: the "RISC-V: Allow VLS types using up to LMUL 8" thread attracted 21 responses on the mailing list.

21 New features & support 16 Vector extension (RVV) 15 Compiler backend / code generation 9 ISA extensions 7 Bug fixes 4 Cleanup & refactoring 3 Performance optimisations

Notable Changes

  • RISC-V: Add support for the XAndesvdot ISA extension. (and 6 more) (c4d5383b1d, Kuan-Lin Chen)
  • RISC-V: Add pattern for vector-scalar single widening floating-point sub (and 9 more) (e18285867e, Paul-Antoine Arras)
  • RISC-V: Combine vec_duplicate + vwaddu.vv to vwaddu.vx on GR2VR cost (and 2 more) (638320686c, Pan Li)
  • [RISC-V][PR target/121213] Avoid unnecessary sign extension in amoswap sequence (b790606e49, Austin Law)
  • fmv: c++: Add check_target_clone hook for filtering target_clone versions. (3cc894e7c3, Alfie Richards)
  • RISC-V: Add missing define_insn_reservation to tt-ascalon-d8.md [PR121982] (4275518a06, Peter Bergner)
  • [RISC-V] Optimize clear-lowest-set-bit sequence when ctz is nearby (4f01f39d02, Jeff Law)
  • RISC-V: Suppress cross CC sibcall optimization from vector (ebd64a4251, Tsukasa OI)
  • RISC-V: Imply zicsr for sdtrig and ssstrict extensions. (3e932d6384, Dongyan Chen)
  • RISC-V: Add min/max patterns for ifcvt. (and 4 more) (75cad4640c, Robin Dapp)
  • RISC-V: Add tt-ascalon-d8 pipeline description (1ac463fc89, Anton Blanchard)
  • [PATCH][PR target/121778] RISC-V: Improve rotation detection for RISC-V (d53f7ad85e, Dusan Stojkovic)
  • fmv: c++: Change target_version semantics to follow ACLE specification. (aeb9a43bbb, Alfie Richards)
  • RISC-V: Fix typo in tt-ascalon-d8's pipeline description [PR121878] (09864c7cd0, Peter Bergner)
  • c++: Refactor FMV frontend conflict and merging logic and hooks. (62287200df, Alfie Richards)

Top Contributors

AuthorCommits
Paul-Antoine Arras10
Kuan-Lin Chen7
Alfie Richards5
Robin Dapp5
Jeff Law3
Pan Li3
Kito Cheng3
Peter Bergner2
Jiawei2
Anton Blanchard2

Notable Discussions

LLVM (RISC-V)

172
Commits
49
Contributors
92122
Lines Added
46305
Lines Removed

It was a busy month in LLVM (RISC-V) land, with 172 commits from 49 contributors. +92,122/-46,305 lines changed — a big diff. Craig Topper was the most active contributor with 49 commits. New feature work included 49 commits: "Revert "[TTI][RISCV] Add cost modelling for intrinsic vp.load.ff (#160470)""; "[ASan][RISCV] Teach AddressSanitizer to support indexed load/store. (#160443)". Code generation improvements dominated with 44 commits. Work on QC_E_LI, Zibi, Zicond accounted for 20 commits.

49 New features & support 45 Cleanup & refactoring 44 Compiler backend / code generation 20 ISA extensions 13 Bug fixes 8 Performance optimisations 5 Vector extension (RVV)

Notable Changes

  • [RISCV][CodeGen] Add CodeGen support of Zibi experimental extension (#146858) (27f8f9e1f1, Boyao Wang)
  • [RISCV] Add MC layer support for Andes XAndesVSIntH extension. (#159514) (d34f738562, Rux124)
  • [RISCV][MC] Add MC support of Zibi experimental extension (#127463) (a7521a81c4, Boyao Wang)
  • [RISCV] Implement MC support for Zvfofp8min extension (#157014) (e747223c03, Jim Lin)
  • [RISC-V] Added the mips extension instructions like ehb,ihb and pause etc for MIPS RV64 P8700. (#155747) (1debf23d7a, UmeshKalappa)
  • [Reland] "[RISCV][TTI] Implement getAddressComputationCost() in RISCV TTI. #149955" (#156386) (8fdae0c7da, Elvis Wang)
  • [RISCV][NFC] Add zeroext attribute to evl arguments in vp-vector-interleaved-access.ll test (b4a43b3bfa, Min-Yih Hsu)
  • [DAG] Add ISD::VECTOR_COMPRESS handling in computeKnownBits/ComputeNumSignBits (#159692) (d46998b1dd, Kavin Gnanapandithan)
  • [RISCV] Add helper method for detecting BEXTI or TH_TST is supported. NFC (#157915) (c6947dad53, Craig Topper)
  • [LLVM][MC][DecoderEmitter] Add support to specialize decoder per bitwidth (#154865) (dafffe262d, Rahul Joshi)
  • [GlobalISel] Add multi-way splitting support for wide scalar shifts. (#155353) (4829dedfa9, Amara Emerson)
  • [ASan][RISCV] Teach AddressSanitizer to support indexed load/store. (#160443) (d2c189bc73, Hank Chang)
  • [RISCV] Add helper functions to detect CLZ/CTZ/CPOP-like support. (#158148) (7d249cf094, Craig Topper)
  • [RISC-V] Add P-ext MC Support for Remaining Pair Operations (#159247) (dd92609fcc, Qihan Cai)
  • [RISCV] Implement computeKnownBitsForTargetNode for SHL_ADD (#159105) (7a098aecb6, Piotr Fusik)

Top Contributors

AuthorCommits
Craig Topper49
Luke Lau14
Min-Yih Hsu10
Philip Reames9
Jim Lin7
Sam Elliott5
Matt Arsenault5
Sergei Barannikov5
Shaoce SUN4
Piotr Fusik4

glibc (RISC-V)

3
Commits
2
Contributors
7
Lines Added
3
Lines Removed

Minimal activity in glibc (RISC-V): 3 commits from 2 contributors. Adhemerval Zanella was the driving force, authoring 2 of 3 commits (66%). On the mailing list, "riscv: Add RVV implementation __strcpy_vector" drew 12 replies.

2 New features & support 1 Bug fixes

Notable Changes

  • math: Add feclearexcept internal alias (2eb8836de7, Adhemerval Zanella)
  • math: Add fetestexcept internal alias (63ba1a1509, Adhemerval Zanella)
  • Fix RISC-V soft-float _FPU_SETCW for GCC 16 set-but-not-used warnings (273f80374a, Joseph Myers)

Top Contributors

AuthorCommits
Adhemerval Zanella2
Joseph Myers1

Binutils (RISC-V)

5
Commits
3
Contributors
61
Lines Added
50
Lines Removed

Binutils (RISC-V) saw lighter activity with 5 commits from 3 contributors. Nelson Chu was the driving force, authoring 3 of 5 commits (60%).

2 ISA extensions 1 New features & support

Notable Changes

  • RISC-V: Add support for sdtrig and ssstrict extensions. (6affec82bd, Dongyan Chen)
  • RISC-V: Don't generate R_RISCV_RELATIVE if symbol referenced section is SH_ABS (and 2 more) (519349b57d, Nelson Chu)
  • elf: Cache ".interp" section pointer in elf_link_hash_table (18bc39c833, H.J. Lu)

Top Contributors

AuthorCommits
Nelson Chu3
H.J. Lu1
Dongyan Chen1

Notable Discussions

GDB (RISC-V)

3
Commits
3
Contributors
53
Lines Added
7
Lines Removed

GDB (RISC-V) was quiet this month with 3 commits from 3 contributors.

1 New features & support

Notable Changes

  • This commit adds support for catching syscalls on riscv (52bb1ca383, Timur Golubovich)
  • gdb/riscv/record: remove possibility of recording an empty instruction (7fb4db4c63, Guinevere Larsen)
  • Use c-ctype.h (not safe-ctype.h) in gdb (15e11aac9c, Tom Tromey)

Top Contributors

AuthorCommits
Timur Golubovich1
Guinevere Larsen1
Tom Tromey1

U-Boot (RISC-V)

11
Commits
5
Contributors
180
Lines Added
950
Lines Removed

Not the busiest month for U-Boot (RISC-V): 11 commits from 5 contributors. A net deletion month (+180/-950) — always satisfying. Top contributor: E Shattow with 5 commits. Platform and DT work accounted for 5 commits. Extension support saw 2 commits covering Zaamo, Zalrsc.

5 Device tree / platform support 2 ISA extensions 2 New features & support 2 Cleanup & refactoring

Notable Changes

  • riscv: Add a Zalrsc-only alternative for synchronization in start.S (a681cfecb4, Yao Zi)
  • riscv: Add Kconfig options to distinguish Zaamo and Zalrsc (fde7702c9b, Yao Zi)
  • riscv: dts: starfive: visionfive2 depend on SYS_CPU automatic dtsi inclusion (and 2 more) (b8732d30a4, E Shattow)
  • configs: starfive: Use visionfive2 DEVICE_TREE_INCLUDES dtsi named similar to defconfig (10fdc2735d, E Shattow)
  • board: starfive: visionfive2: deprecate mixed-case product ids VF7110a VF7110b (b82fa9d752, E Shattow)
  • board: microchip: icicle: rename all icicle files to generic (d141a41feb, Jamie Gibbons)
  • starfive: avoid NULL dereference in fdt_check_header() (686b48af6d, Heinrich Schuchardt)
  • arch/riscv: Remove unused macro in encoding.h (36d9587fa8, Greentime Hu)
  • dts: th1520: Switch to upstream devicetree (0d74bbfda3, Yao Zi)

Top Contributors

AuthorCommits
E Shattow5
Yao Zi3
Greentime Hu1
Jamie Gibbons1
Heinrich Schuchardt1

OpenOCD (RISC-V)

6
Commits
3
Contributors
106
Lines Added
80
Lines Removed

OpenOCD (RISC-V) saw lighter activity with 6 commits from 3 contributors. Most of the work came from Marc Schink (4 of 6 commits, 66%).

3 New features & support

Notable Changes

  • jtag/drivers/cmsis_dap: add new backend cmsis_dap_tcp (fcff4b712c, Brian Kuschak)
  • adapter: Rework parallel port driver (and 2 more) (7bc74de62d, Marc Schink)
  • doc: drop incorrect lack of namespaces in Jim Tcl (db79156fd5, Antonio Borneo)
  • flash/nor/stm32l4x: Change 'option_read' output (20ca4f4bee, Marc Schink)

Top Contributors

AuthorCommits
Marc Schink4
Antonio Borneo1
Brian Kuschak1

OpenBLAS (RISC-V)

9
Commits
3
Contributors
2912
Lines Added
485
Lines Removed

OpenBLAS (RISC-V) saw lighter activity with 9 commits from 3 contributors. Top contributor: Chip Kerchner with 4 commits. RVV work continued with 5 commits touching vector-related code. 4 commits targeted performance improvements.

5 Vector extension (RVV) 4 Performance optimisations 3 New features & support 1 Bug fixes 1 Cleanup & refactoring

Notable Changes

  • Optimize RISC-V RVV omatcopy_ct implementation with advanced vectorization (bd45b82ed0, Dayuxiaoshui)
  • Optimize RISC-V RVV omatcopy implementation with latest RVV API\n\nCo-authored-by: gong-flying (2265318d3e, Dayuxiaoshui)
  • Add vectorized packing for FP16 and BF16. Reactivate vector packing for FP64 transposed. (07d0e742c2, Chip Kerchner)
  • Fix _Float16 casting issue and reduce LMUL for certain vector instruction from m2 to m1. (a4abf7828e, Chip Kerchner)
  • riscv: gemv_t_vector.c optimize (53d7452cdf, yuanjia)
  • Add OMATCOPY_CT performance test with RVV optimization (708d586599, Dayuxiaoshui)
  • Add BF16 sbgemm on RISCV. (92f09a6a98, Chip Kerchner)
  • Reduce flags for BF16 to only needed ones. (9427eaf4c4, Chip Kerchner)
  • remove unused variable (826cb4588f, yuanjia)

Top Contributors

AuthorCommits
Chip Kerchner4
Dayuxiaoshui3
yuanjia2

Linux Kernel Docs & DT (RISC-V)

7
Commits
5
Contributors
51
Lines Added
0
Lines Removed

A quieter month for Linux Kernel Docs & DT (RISC-V), with 7 commits from 5 contributors. Platform and DT work accounted for 7 commits.

7 Device tree / platform support 5 New features & support 1 ISA extensions

Notable Changes

  • dt-bindings: riscv: Add xmipsexectl ISA extension description (f79671dc87, Aleksa Paunovic)
  • dt-bindings: riscv: Add SiFive HiFive Premier P550 board (3e907d0faa, Pritesh Patel)
  • dt-bindings: riscv: starfive: add milkv,marscm-lite (12a2910838, E Shattow)
  • dt-bindings: riscv: starfive: add milkv,marscm-emmc (d1829e0b2f, E Shattow)
  • dt-bindings: riscv: Add SiFive P550 CPU compatible (b9607ff0f8, Darshan Prajapati)
  • dt-bindings: riscv: microchip: document icicle kit with production device (87f8ae1d0f, Valentina Fernandez)
  • dt-bindings: riscv: microchip: document Discovery Kit (d6d9d9be2a, Valentina Fernandez)

Top Contributors

AuthorCommits
E Shattow2
Valentina Fernandez2
Pritesh Patel1
Darshan Prajapati1
Aleksa Paunovic1