RISC-V Software News

January 2026 — Upstream Open Source Activity

The Big Picture

With 356 commits across 12 projects, January was a solid month for RISC-V upstream development. LLVM (RISC-V) led with 189 commits (53%). Also active: Linux Kernel (RISC-V) (85), QEMU (RISC-V) (32), GCC (RISC-V) (19). Software support advanced for QC_EXTU, QC_E_ADDAI, Sstvala, Sstvecd, Zbb, Zbkc, Zibi, Zk.

RISC-V International

The spec repos saw 30 commits this month, led by ISA Manual with 28 commits.

Spec Repository Activity

RepositoryCommitsContributors
ISA Manual 28 12
Debug Spec 1 1
SBI Spec 1 1

Community Buzz (r/RISCV)

The most popular posts on r/RISCV this month, ranked by upvotes.

Linux Kernel (RISC-V)

85
Commits
40
Contributors
2950
Lines Added
882
Lines Removed

Linux Kernel (RISC-V) had a solid month with 85 commits from 40 contributors. Deepak Gupta was the most active contributor with 20 commits. New feature work included 33 commits: "riscv: create a Kconfig fragment for shadow stack and landing pad support"; "arch/riscv: add dual vdso creation logic and select vdso based on hw". Platform and DT work accounted for 19 commits. Bug fixes accounted for 12 commits (14%). ISA extension work spanned 10 commits, touching Zk, Zknh.

33 New features & support 19 Device tree / platform support 12 Bug fixes 10 ISA extensions 4 Interrupt controllers (AIA/APLIC/PLIC) 3 KVM / Virtualisation 3 Performance optimisations 2 Vector extension (RVV) 2 Cleanup & refactoring

Notable Changes

  • riscv: dts: spacemit: add K3 Pico-ITX board support (and 4 more) (7a61318049, Guodong Xu)
  • riscv: ptrace: return ENODATA for inactive vector extension (8cdb04bd06, Ilya Mamay)
  • riscv: hwprobe: add support for RISCV_HWPROBE_KEY_IMA_EXT_1 (462a94fb8a, Paul Walmsley)
  • riscv: defconfig: spacemit: k3: enable clock support (574dc9ae4f, Yixun Lan)
  • mm/page_table_check: reinstate address parameter in [__]page_table_check_pte_clear() (and 5 more) (d7b4b67eb6, Rohan McLure)
  • riscv: dts: spacemit: sdhci: add reset support (7689c2d1bb, Yixun Lan)
  • riscv: create a Kconfig fragment for shadow stack and landing pad support (and 7 more) (22c1e263af, Deepak Gupta)
  • riscv: ERRATA_STARFIVE_JH7100: Fix missing dependency on new CONFIG_CACHEMAINT_FOR_DMA (521cadb4b6, Jonathan Cameron)
  • riscv: dts: sophgo: enable hardware clock (RTC) on the Milk-V Pioneer (9e81c52268, Michael Orlitzky)
  • arch/riscv: add dual vdso creation logic and select vdso based on hw (ccad8c1336, Deepak Gupta)
  • riscv/traps: Introduce software check exception and uprobe handling (9d42fc28fc, Deepak Gupta)
  • mm: provide address parameter to p{te,md,ud}_user_accessible_page() (d79f9c9cf7, Rohan McLure)
  • riscv: Add intermediate cast to 'unsigned long' in __get_user_asm (841e47d56c, Nathan Chancellor)
  • riscv: dts: spacemit: Enable USB3.0 on BananaPi-F3 (and 2 more) (c7e62c4eea, Ze Huang)
  • Revert "irqchip/riscv-imsic: Embed the vector array in lpriv" (a33d16dc87, Anup Patel)

Top Contributors

AuthorCommits
Deepak Gupta20
Rohan McLure7
Guodong Xu6
Mike Rapoport (Microsoft)4
Ze Huang3
Naohiko Shimizu3
Juergen Gross3
Paul Walmsley2
Yixun Lan2
Nathan Chancellor2

OpenSBI

2
Commits
2
Contributors
4
Lines Added
8
Lines Removed

A light month for OpenSBI with 2 commits from 2 contributors. Bug fixes dominated: 2/2 commits (100%). A month focused on getting things right.

2 Bug fixes

Notable Changes

  • lib: sbi: Fix behavior on platform without HART protection (74434f2558, Michal Simek)
  • include: sbi_scratch: fix typo sbi_scratch -> HART id (65fac65311, Leo Yu-Chi Liang)

Top Contributors

AuthorCommits
Michal Simek1
Leo Yu-Chi Liang1

QEMU (RISC-V)

32
Commits
13
Contributors
1833
Lines Added
508
Lines Removed

A steady month for QEMU (RISC-V) with 32 commits from 13 contributors. Top contributor: Djordje Todorovic with 9 commits. New feature work included 12 commits: "riscv/boston-aia: Add an e1000e NIC in slot 0 func 1"; "hw/riscv: Add support for MIPS Boston-aia board mode". Bug fixes accounted for 4 commits (12%).

12 New features & support 4 Compiler backend / code generation 4 Bug fixes 2 ISA extensions 2 Interrupt controllers (AIA/APLIC/PLIC) 2 Cleanup & refactoring 1 Vector extension (RVV)

Notable Changes

  • target/riscv: Add Zilsd and Zclsd extension support (4975960510, lxx)
  • hw/riscv: Add support for MIPS Boston-aia board mode (2264f637da, Djordje Todorovic)
  • hw/riscv: Add support for RISCV CPS (12eda1a6aa, Djordje Todorovic)
  • Add RISCV ZALASR extension (26154585c6, Roan Richmond)
  • target/riscv: Use little-endian variant of cpu_ld/st_data*() for vector (b7f18d2980, Philippe Mathieu-Daudé)
  • riscv/boston-aia: Add an e1000e NIC in slot 0 func 1 (94081c10af, Djordje Todorovic)
  • target/riscv: Add Xmipslsp instructions (and 5 more) (84635b9396, Djordje Todorovic)
  • target/riscv/cpu: add riscv_dump_csr() helper (c10187b12d, Daniel Henrique Barboza)
  • target/riscv: Remove upper_half from riscv_pmu_ctr_get_fixed_counters_val (cfc96df65e, Alistair Francis)
  • hw/riscv: riscv-iommu: Don't look up DDT cache in Off and Bare modes (15406cc593, Frank Chang)
  • target/riscv: print all available CSRs in riscv_cpu_dump_state() (354c16c69f, Daniel Henrique Barboza)
  • hw/core/loader: Make load_elf_hdr() return bool, simplify caller (7bfd6c0e09, Markus Armbruster)
  • target/riscv: Combine mhpmcounter and mhpmcounterh (and 6 more) (4fe8ae0906, Anton Johansson)
  • target/riscv/cpu: print all FPU CSRs in riscv_cpu_dump_state() (8e35971a56, Daniel Henrique Barboza)
  • error: Use error_setg_errno() to improve error messages (b351b49275, Markus Armbruster)

Top Contributors

AuthorCommits
Djordje Todorovic9
Anton Johansson7
Daniel Henrique Barboza3
Peter Maydell2
Richard Henderson2
Markus Armbruster2
Philippe Mathieu-Daudé1
Cédric Le Goater1
Roan Richmond1
lxx1

GCC (RISC-V)

19
Commits
8
Contributors
1192
Lines Added
563
Lines Removed

GCC (RISC-V) saw moderate activity with 19 commits from 8 contributors. Robin Dapp was the most active contributor with 6 commits. Bug fixes accounted for 6 commits (31%).

6 Bug fixes 4 New features & support 2 ISA extensions 2 Compiler backend / code generation 1 Vector extension (RVV) 1 Cleanup & refactoring 1 Performance optimisations

Notable Changes

  • RISC-V: Add zvfbfmin to tt-ascalon-d8's extension list [PR123492] (and 2 more) (c9058b7671, Peter Bergner)
  • RISC-V: Add support for _BitInt [PR117581] (808b684172, Kito Cheng)
  • targethooks: Change SAME_FUNCTION_VERSIONS hook to support checking mergeability (3ecc4d571f, Alfie Richards)
  • [RISC-V][PR rtl-optimization/121787] Work around bad cfglayout interaction with asm goto (63e0c271e9, Jeff Law)
  • [PATCH v1 1/2] RISC-V: Fix incorrect combine pattern for any_extend [PR123317] (2dbf9c0fec, Pan Li)
  • [RISC-V] Restore inline expansion of block moves on RISC-V in some cases (0c3d8dd928, Jeff Law)
  • Partially revert patch that made VXRM a global register on RISC-V (08ccc67ef4, Jeff Law)
  • RISC-V: Handle VL-setting FoF loads. [PR123806] (and 5 more) (6a1578c1f6, Robin Dapp)
  • [RISC-V][PR target/123626] Fix VXRM state after calls (6b79f1a5b8, Jeff Law)
  • [RISC-V] Clamp long reservations to 7c (8265192910, Jeff Law)
  • doc: make regenerate-opt-urls (c53c1ce78e, Sandra Loosemore)
  • Update copyright years. (254a858ae7, Jakub Jelinek)

Top Contributors

AuthorCommits
Robin Dapp6
Jeff Law5
Peter Bergner3
Sandra Loosemore1
Kito Cheng1
Alfie Richards1
Pan Li1
Jakub Jelinek1

LLVM (RISC-V)

189
Commits
42
Contributors
140678
Lines Added
28438
Lines Removed

Plenty of action in LLVM (RISC-V) this month: 189 commits from 42 contributors. +140,678/-28,438 lines changed — a big diff. Leading the charge was Craig Topper with 61 commits. New feature work included 76 commits: "[DAG] Reland: Enable bitcast STLF for Constant/Undef (#178890)"; "Revert "[DAG] Enable bitcast STLF for Constant/Undef" (#178872)". ISA extension work spanned 46 commits, touching QC_EXTU, QC_E_ADDAI, Zbb, Zbkc, Zibi, Zvbc. Backend and code generation work was the biggest theme at 43 commits.

76 New features & support 58 Cleanup & refactoring 46 ISA extensions 43 Compiler backend / code generation 15 Vector extension (RVV) 14 Bug fixes 4 Performance optimisations

Notable Changes

  • [RISCV] Add support for Zibi experimental extension in RISCVRedundantCopyElimination (#174920) (6902f3310e, Boyao Wang)
  • [RISCV] Add ZZZ_ to some inline assembly vector register classes to sort them after VR/VRNoV0 in regclass enum. (#177087) (73a309e20e, Craig Topper)
  • [LV] Add support for llvm.vector.partial.reduce.fadd (#163975) (762ba885f9, Damian Heaton)
  • [RISCV] Use static arrays+ArrayRef instead of SmallVector to select P extension vector VTs. NFC (#175390) (00915b22ff, Craig Topper)
  • [RISCV] Add support for XAndesPerf branch on immediate in RISCVRedundantCopyElimination (#174706) (5185f07a37, Jim Lin)
  • [RISCV] Add missing HasStdExtZvkb Predicate to some of the vector rotate patterns. NFC (#178250) (72c9304bb9, Craig Topper)
  • [RISCV] Add support for Xqcibi branch on immediate in RISCVRedundantCopyElimination (#174358) (41c5830aab, Sudharsan Veeravalli)
  • [RISCV] Add a template function for disassembling LMUL=2/4/8 vector registers. NFC (#177681) (97c4a5fc1d, Craig Topper)
  • [RISCV] Add the missing SEW search table field to vector FMA instructions (#175646) (ed9f5c93dc, Min-Yih Hsu)
  • [RISCV] Add SimplifyDemandedBits and hasAllNBitUsers support for CLSW. (#174542) (551d55397a, Craig Topper)
  • [SelectionDAG] Add very basic computeKnownBits support for ISD::CLMUL. (#177445) (53b0a64e98, Craig Topper)
  • [RISCV][llvm] Handle calling convention for P extension fixed vectors (#176093) (2a8a694b50, Brandon Wu)
  • [RISCV] Support ISD::CLMUL/CLMULH for i64 scalable vectors with Zvbc. (#178340) (80cbd1d696, Craig Topper)
  • [TTI] Add VectorInstrContext for context-aware insert/extract costs. (#175982) (b794baf8e7, Florian Hahn)
  • [RISCV] Add isCommutable=1 to some binary P extension instructions. (#175692) (a0e0775d91, Craig Topper)

Top Contributors

AuthorCommits
Craig Topper61
Brandon Wu24
Sudharsan Veeravalli12
Sam Elliott8
Jim Lin8
Francesco Petrogalli7
Mikhail Gudim7
Luke Lau5
Pengcheng Wang5
Alexander Richardson5

glibc (RISC-V)

3
Commits
2
Contributors
135
Lines Added
132
Lines Removed

Minimal activity in glibc (RISC-V): 3 commits from 2 contributors. Yao Zihong was the driving force, authoring 2 of 3 commits (66%). Cleanup and refactoring made up 1 commit (33%).

1 Cleanup & refactoring

Notable Changes

  • riscv: Disable multiarch memcpy variants when !IS_IN(libc) (343b7918da, Yao Zihong)
  • riscv: Disable multiarch memset variants when !IS_IN(libc) (39d9fa9e31, Yao Zihong)
  • Update copyright dates with scripts/update-copyrights (66f3e9219d, Paul Eggert)

Top Contributors

AuthorCommits
Yao Zihong2
Paul Eggert1

Notable Discussions

Binutils (RISC-V)

6
Commits
5
Contributors
136
Lines Added
39
Lines Removed

Binutils (RISC-V) saw lighter activity with 6 commits from 5 contributors.

2 New features & support 1 Bug fixes 1 Cleanup & refactoring

Notable Changes

  • RISC-V: Add second-pass relaxation for JAL to C.J/C.JAL (44c3932467, Kito Cheng)
  • gas: implement parsing of object attributes v2 (737979d0b3, Richard Ball)
  • gas: use common code for object attribute v1 & v2 parsing (f860cea7c6, Matthieu Longo)
  • Update year range in copyright notice of binutils files (c8f306af2f, Alan Modra)
  • gas/riscv: Fix grammar in error messages (4386db3c4c, Andreas Schwab)
  • elf_backend_data typedef (39d685b15e, Alan Modra)

Top Contributors

AuthorCommits
Alan Modra2
Matthieu Longo1
Richard Ball1
Kito Cheng1
Andreas Schwab1

GDB (RISC-V)

1
Commits
1
Contributors
28
Lines Added
28
Lines Removed

GDB (RISC-V) had exactly one commit this month. Cleanup and refactoring made up 1 commit (100%).

1 Cleanup & refactoring

Notable Changes

  • Update copyright dates to include 2026 (4abc1ce2cc, Tom Tromey)

Top Contributors

AuthorCommits
Tom Tromey1

U-Boot (RISC-V)

4
Commits
3
Contributors
1274
Lines Added
1274
Lines Removed

A light month for U-Boot (RISC-V) with 4 commits from 3 contributors.

1 Cleanup & refactoring 1 Device tree / platform support

Notable Changes

  • riscv: Update linker scripts to ensure appended device tree is aligned (f150843499, Tom Rini)
  • board: nxp: Rename board directory from board/freescale to board/nxp (add12cb688, Alice Guo)
  • Revert "doc: board: starfive: update jh7110 common description" (d503633a36, Tom Rini)
  • doc: board: starfive: update jh7110 common description (8304f32267, E Shattow)

Top Contributors

AuthorCommits
Tom Rini2
Alice Guo1
E Shattow1

OpenOCD (RISC-V)

4
Commits
4
Contributors
10
Lines Added
2
Lines Removed

Minimal activity in OpenOCD (RISC-V): 4 commits from 4 contributors.

3 New features & support 1 Bug fixes

Notable Changes

  • configure.ac: Replace --enable-verbose-usb-comms with a new runtime log level. (ea9afa9e3e, R. Diez)
  • doc: add STM32WBA as supported by flash driver 'stm32l4x' (b36de4f539, Antonio Borneo)
  • doc/opencocd.texi: mention support of PIC32CZ CA70 (587c783103, Michal Lenc)
  • target/riscv: fix riscv exec_progbuf for SMP targets (ad0ed194f5, Samuel Obuch)

Top Contributors

AuthorCommits
Antonio Borneo1
R. Diez1
Michal Lenc1
Samuel Obuch1

Eigen (RISC-V)

2
Commits
1
Contributors
1070
Lines Added
576
Lines Removed

Eigen (RISC-V) was quiet this month with 2 commits. Most of the work came from Chip Kerchner (2 of 2 commits, 100%). The vector extension (RVV) saw 2 commits of continued development.

2 Vector extension (RVV) 1 Bug fixes

Notable Changes

  • Initial version of reactivating RVV features like GeneralBlockPanelKernel (5d9beb81ab, Chip Kerchner)
  • Fix more packetmath issues for RVV (7aea350ba1, Chip Kerchner)

Top Contributors

AuthorCommits
Chip Kerchner2

Linux Kernel Docs & DT (RISC-V)

9
Commits
3
Contributors
200
Lines Added
14
Lines Removed

Linux Kernel Docs & DT (RISC-V) saw lighter activity with 9 commits from 3 contributors. Guodong Xu dominated with 7/9 commits (77%). Board and device tree support got 9 commits. Work on Sstvala, Sstvecd accounted for 6 commits. New feature work included 6 commits: "dt-bindings: riscv: spacemit: add K3 and Pico-ITX board bindings"; "dt-bindings: riscv: add SpacemiT X100 CPU compatible".

9 Device tree / platform support 6 ISA extensions 6 New features & support

Notable Changes

  • dt-bindings: riscv: spacemit: add K3 and Pico-ITX board bindings (and 6 more) (7cb5fafc18, Guodong Xu)
  • dt-bindings: riscv: document zicfilp and zicfiss in extensions.yaml (f94645fc03, Deepak Gupta)
  • dt-bindings: riscv: extensions: Drop unnecessary select schema (a36b2aaae7, Rob Herring (Arm))

Top Contributors

AuthorCommits
Guodong Xu7
Deepak Gupta1
Rob Herring (Arm)1