RISC-V Tech Journal

The RISC-V Tech Journal is a sequential log of lightweight updates with links, shared openly by all RISC-V Members, always fresh without publishing cycles, and fully traceable as a living timeline. New entries should always be added at the top so the most recent updates are immediately visible.

Entry Template

Aug 27, 2025 1–2 sentences on what happened/was achieved, [Link/Doc/PR/Notes]

This is a live doc! You can make updates instantly without having to publish!


1 2026 | 2 2025

2026

February


  • Feb 14, 2026 Version 0.10 of the Sail RISC-V Golden Model has been released, and is available at https://github.com/riscv/sail-riscv/releases.
    The highlight of this release is the switch to using the C++ backend of the Sail compiler. The generated model for the hart is wrapped in a C++ class, which opens up the possibility of instantiating multiple harts to simulate multicore platforms (though this is not yet implemented).

    A `--config-override` option has been added to specify one or more additional JSON configuration files that override the corresponding fields in a configuration. See the README for more information.

    This release adds 9 extensions and 2 unratified extensions.  The unratified extensions require the `--enable-experimental-extensions` option to be activated.

    More details, including updates to the configuration file and important bug fixes, are in the release notes at https://github.com/riscv/sail-riscv/blob/master/doc/ChangeLog.md#release-notes-for-version-010 .

  • Feb 2, 2026 ARC Minutes for Jan 21, 2202 published. ARC approved RHTI Packet Formats to be pursed as a Fast-Track, assigned CSR numbers for the three direct CSRs defined in the Sspmp and Sspmpen (formerly Sspmpsw) extensions, and in the process changed the names of the sspmpswitch[h] CSRs to spmpen[h], and also Unprivileged and Privileged IC chairs declared an Official Release of Volumes I and II of the ISA manual.

  • Feb 2, 2026 There’s a new approach to visualize our Technical Committees. It is simpler and more intuitive

    As it contains Chairs’ email, its access is internal-only, for RISC-V Members. It is behind GitHub, so you must be part of the https://github.com/orgs/riscv/teams/risc-v-members  to be able to see it (if you can’t reach out to help@riscv.org).

    You can access the Technical Committee Explorer here. Your feedback is more than welcome.

January


2025

December


  • Dec 22, 2025 Week in Review: This week centered on technical governance and specification maturity, marked by a strategic pivot in the Attached Matrix Extension (AME) framework to ensure architectural flexibility, deep technical debates on speculation barriers and trace correctness, steady progress on portable SIMD and custom extension context handling, and accelerating alignment on requirements and test artifacts for the 2026 certification roadmap.

  • Dec 17, 2025Linux Plumbers Recordings are available here.

  • Dec 16, 2025 ARC Minutes for

  • Dec 12, 2025 Week in Review: this week centered on technical governance and specification maturity, marked by the recall of the AME data type vote to pivot toward a more flexible architectural framework, deep technical debate on speculation barriers and trace correctness, progress on portable SIMD and custom extension context handling, and accelerating alignment on requirements and test artifacts for 2026 certification.

  • Dec 10, 2025Qualcomm acquires Ventana.

  • Dec 10, 2025RISC-V Technical Session | RISC-V Technical Session | Labs, Containers and RISC-V. Dec 18, 2025, 7 a.m Pacific Time.

  • Dec 10, 2025Call for Candidates for VME and RVM Profile closed this week. Vote starts soon.

  • Dec 9, 2025 The Certification Steering Committee election for Community Member Representatives has concluded, with 8 ballots submitted out of 40 eligible voters, and using Instant Runoff Voting the two seats were awarded to David Harris (Harvey Mudd College) and Allen Baum (Individual Member), following a first-round tie and a second-round elimination of Mike Thompson (OpenHW Foundation).

  • Dec 5, 2025 Week in Review: ACLIC–AIA alignment and cleanup toward internal review in fast-interrupts, deepening architectural debate on Smtw/Shtw timeout semantics in ARC, launching the first draft of a CX-agnostic context save/restore framework in the composable-extensions TG, and expanding engagement across RPMI and PQC cryptography as new contributors joined the ecosystem.

  • Dec 4, 2025Election Results:

    • Space SIG: Chair: @Gianluca.Furano, European Space Agency, Vice-Chair: @Fabrizio Magugliani , E4 Computer Engineering.

    • Profiles SIG: Chair: @Carl Perry , Individual.

    • Server SOC II TG: Chair: @Vedvyas Shanbhogue , Rivos.

    • Long Instruction TG: Chair: @Stefan Wallentowitz , Vice-Chair: @Krste Asanovic, SiFive

    • Vector DSP TG: Chair @Dmitry Utyansky , Vice-Chair @Li Gaoshan , Xinsheng Technology.

  • Dec 3, 2025HotChips presentations are available online.

  • Dec 3, 2025CSC Updates: Over the past two weeks, CSC groups focused on resolving ambiguities in the ISA text, especially regarding when and how to add clarifying non-normative notes or supplemental context to normative rules, worked through cross-team questions on the ownership of specification changes, refined requirements and test-plan alignment, and continued routine governance activities including the CSC representative election.

    December 3, 2025 ARC Minutes for November 25, 2025 published: ARC proposed updates to the sPMP draft and shared it with the TG for what should be a final revision, while also resolving a vector SIG issue by updating the spec to cover double-precision register-pair handling for V/Zve64d with RV32_Zdinx.

    December 1, 2025 RISC V Technical Session | Programming RISC V Accelerators via Fortran. Video published.

November


  • Nov 30, 2025 Week in Review: tightening FP64-in-RV32 semantics in the vector SIG, consolidating documentation-governance and charter feedback in the documentation SIG, deepening the security SIG’s analysis of multi-key memory-encryption threat models, driving functional-safety white-paper readiness and SoC-level PMC scoping, reviewing the proposed Smtw/Shtw extension in ARC, and delivering updated instruction naming in the P-extension TG while formally sunsetting the tech-config TG.

  • Nov 26, 2025A refreshed draft of the Functional Safety SIG White Paper, featuring a new error-reporting chapter and relocating identified spec gaps to a companion document, is now open for final community review through Dec 26, 2025.

  • Nov 25, 2025 The Automotive SIG has completed its elections, confirming Thomas Roecker (Infineon) as Chair and electing Sam Visalli (Tenstorrent) as Vice-chair for the new term.

  • Nov 25, 2025 Call for Candidates for VME TG started. It will close on Dec 9, 2025.

  • Nov 25, 2025 Call for Candidates for the RVM Profile TG started. It will close on Dec 8, 2025

  • Nov 25, 2025 ARC Minutes for Nov 18, 2025 published: ARC advanced multiple items this cycle, including approving the renaming of Zvabd mnemonics, clarifying synchronization rules for xenvcfg.ADUE, refining the statement of RVWMO atomicity, directing a proposed E-trace update to proceed as a new fast-track extension, and formally approving the Zvdota and Zvbdota instruction families.

  • Nov 22, 2025Instrumentation Trace TG finalized leadership election this week, confirming @Jay Gamoneda as chair and electing @Robert Chyla as vice-chair.

  • Nov 22, 2025 Week in Review: This week working groups advanced several key threads: launching a scheduling survey for the new Attached Matrix Extension TC, iterating on a G-stage Dirty Log proposal for the RISC-V IOMMU (ping-pong buffers, sizing and event semantics) in the hypervisor/datacenter SIGs, debating trace back-pressure, trRamStopOnWrap behavior and the need for a global cross-triggering fabric in the debug/trace SIG, exploring how to validate VLEN-portable code and emulate intrinsics across implementations in the vector SIG, and kicking off focused review of the draft RVM23 profile’s mandatory vs optional extensions in tech-RVM.

  • Nov 22, 2025 A survey is now available to determine the most suitable meeting time slot for the Attached Matrix Extension Technical Committee. All active participants are invited to submit their preferred option by November 30, 2025, using this link: https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/K2RCK3K.

  • Nov 15, 2025 Week in Review: This week’s RISC-V ecosystem chatter spanned security-SIG scheduling alignment, segment-driven ISA requirement debates, documentation-template streamlining, vector-extension time-slot coordination, and governance updates including Performance Analysis SIG chair re-elections and the QoS SIG’s meeting-cadence kickoff.

  • Nov 14, 2025High Assurance Crypto TG: the Vice-Chair election concluded confirming Roberto Avanzi as the new Vice-Chair.

  • Nov 13, 2025The TSC’s OpaVote on the Unified Database TG Charter closed with 21 ballots cast, delivering a majority of 20 approvals, surpassing the required threshold and formally approving the UDB SIG charter. The SIG will be brought back to TSC in 6 months for an update on its progress (around May 2026).

  • Nov 11, 2025 ARC Minutes for Nov 4, 2025 published. An updated SPMP spec and related fast-track extensions (including SPMP-for-Hypervisor, CFI shadow-stack items, Supervisor Domains, and a rewritten Ziccid proposal) were reviewed, with targeted restructuring, follow-on feedback, and a request for a ratification plan to align software PoCs and ecosystem readiness.

  • Nov 10, 2025You can now run the RISC-V Sail model without installing Sail, Z3, or Opam, simply download the latest binary release from the riscv-sail-riscv repository and run it with no additional dependencies.

  • Nov 7, 2025 Week in Review: This week’s RISC-V mailing list discussions centered on detailed review of the Ssgeien extension in the privileged spec, proposed standards for documentation and CSR formatting, and coordination around performance-modeling workflows.

  • Nov 7, 2025 Ratification Plan unanimously approved (21–0–0) advancing RVA23.1 (RVS-4180) and RVB23.1 (RVS-4184) Fast Tracks, now actively in development.

  • Nov 3, 2025 Heads-up on RISC-V Meetings and Encumbered Information.

  • Nov 3, 2025 Call for Candidates for the Long Instruction TG is open. It will close on Nov 17th 2025.

October


  • Oct 31, 2025Call for Candidates for the Vector Digital Signal Processing TG started. It will be open until Nov 14, 2025.

  • Oct 31, 2025 Week in Review: Unified Database SIG discussed fixes to issues #730/#848 and regeneration of the profiles spreadsheet; Fast Interrupts TG discussed implementing late preemption and tail chaining in software; Attached Matrix Extension TG discussed data types, tile and accumulator shapes; ARC reviewed CHERI extension organization, Zvbc32e and Zvkgs specs, Server Platform, SPMP, and Supervisor Domains.

  • Oct 30, 2202 ARC Minutes for Oct 2, 2025 published. The ARC engaged with the CHERI TG at the RISC-V Summit to refine CHERI extension organization, base ISA and naming considerations, advanced the Zvbc32e and Zvkgs specs toward approval, provided recommendations on Server Platform ISA behavior for thread/VM migration, and began reviewing the latest SPMP and Supervisor Domains drafts.

  • Oct 30, 2025RISC-V Technical Session | Programming RISC-V accelerators via Fortran will be help on Nov 27, 2025, 7 a.m Pacific Time. Register here.

  • Oct 29, 2025Call for Candidates for the Profiles SIG started. It will be open until Nov 12, 2025.

  • Oct 29, 2025ARC Minutes for Oct 14, 2025 published. The ARC approved the Smpmpmt PMP-based Memory Types extension pending cosmetic edits, advanced the Zvzip fast-track with new nomenclature aligned to Packed SIMD P and scalar crypto, and green-lit the Zvfbfa and Zvfofp8min fast-track based on sufficient altfmt extensibility. The committee also queued SPMP for upcoming review and initiated evaluation of the Zvdota and Zvbdota dot-product fast-tracks, with continued analysis planned.

  • Oct 29, 2025 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p5Je_FxIXts

  • Oct 28, 2025 Week in Review: RISC-V Summit North America 2025, presentations attached to Sched. Some photos available here.

  • Oct 28, 2025Call for Candidates for the Space SIG started. It will be open until Nov 10, 2025.

  • Oct 28, 2025The Technical Steering Committee successfully concluded its vote to approve the updated RPMI TG Charter, with 19 ballots cast and an outcome of 18 approve, 1 abstain, and 0 objections, surpassing the required majority.

  • Oct 18, 2025 Week in Review: Discussions centered on certification test coverage (CSC WG), hypervisor dirty-log tracking refinements and hardware-assisted PTE clearing, new fast-track proposals for S-mode memory protection and M-mode shadow stacks, coordination of crypto and security sessions ahead of the RISC-V Summit NA, and several TG meeting cancellations due to Summit preparations.

  • Oct 17, 2025The Technical Steering Committee has officially approved the Crypto SIG Charter with unanimous support (19 votes in favor, 0 objections, 0 abstentions).

  • Oct 16, 2025 Version 0.9 of the sail-riscv model has been released. Highlights include support for many new extensions (including the E base and BFloat16 extensions), PMA and memory map configuration, and a binary release of the simulator supporting other architectures. See the changelog for full release notes.

  • Oct 14, 2025CSC-wide meeting minutes published; The meeting focused on reviewing and approving the Test Plan Working Group's charter, which was successfully approved with a quorum of 11 out of 13 voters present.

  • Oct 14, 2025Call for Candidates | Vice-Chair, for the the High Assurance Cryptography Task Group has started and will close on Oct 28, 2025.

  • Oct 14, 2025Leadership swap for the High Assurance Cryptography Task Group (https://riscv.atlassian.net/browse/RVG-145). @Ruud Derwig from Synopsys is taking the Chair position, replacing @G. Richard Newell, effective immediately.

  • Oct 14, 2025The Call for Participation, Voters, and Observers for the Vector Digital Signal Processing TG has started and will close on Oct 28, 2025.

  • Oct 13, 2025Mailing list for the Vector Digital Signal Processing TG is now available.

  • Oct 13, 2025 Support for the Zvfbfwma extension has been added to the Sail model.

  • Oct 9, 2025Call for Candidates for the Server SoC II is in progress and will end on Oct 23, 2025.

  • Oct 9, 2025 Support for the Zvfbfmin extension has been added to the Sail model.

  • Oct 9, 2025The JITed and Dynamic Languages SIG confirmed Martin Maas (Google) as Chair and Adam Zabrocki (NVIDIA) as Vice-Chair, following unanimous approval in the recent elections.

  • Oct 7, 2025 Support for static PMAs has been added to the Sail model.

  • Oct 7, 2025 The internal review period for the RISC-V Quality of Service Controllers Table (RQSC) ACPI Specification has started. The two-week review will end on Oct 21, 2025.

  • Oct 6, 2025The Branch with Immediate Fast Track Extension got the approval from its Governing Committee (the Unprivileged ISA), for the Development Complete milestone.

  • Oct 3, 2025 ARC Minutes for Sep 30, 2025 published: This week’s ARC activity included receipt of an updated CHERI specification, continued Supervisor Domains review including discussion of the optional Ssgeien extension, a resolution proposal on MSI PTE caching in the IOMMU specification, and the start of Zvfbfa/Zvfofp8min and Zvldot/Zvbdot fast-track reviews.

  • Oct 3, 2025 Week in Review: mailing lists this week covered discussions on VME behavior, CSR access and mtime writability, CHERI profile governance, Datacenter persistence flush extensions, AI/ML scope definition, Server SoC planning, documentation tooling, debug process alignment, and matrix extension design feedback.

  • Oct 3, 2025The vote on the Advanced Core-Local Interrupt Controller Spec concluded with 4 of 5 ballots cast; the majority threshold was not met (1 Approve, 3 Object), so the spec was not approved and will return to the authors and Privileged IC Chairs for revision.

  • Oct 2, 2025TSC has started voting on the Crypto SIG Charter via OpaVote, running through October 16, 2025.

  • Oct 2, 2025TSC has approved the Load-Acquire/Store-Release (Zalasr) Fast Track Extension (18–0–0), clearing it for submission to the Board for final ratification in October.

  • Oct 1, 2025David Harris (Harvey Mudd College) was elected Chair and Adnan Hamid (Breker Verification Systems) Vice-Chair in the first CSC Test Plan Work Group elections.

September


August


  • Aug 29, 2025Attached Matrix Extension TG have defined the date for its extra meetings, it will on 10PM GMT+8, Sept 3 (Wednesday) | 7AM PDT, Sept 3 (Wednesday). It will show up at https://tech.riscv.org/calendar. Reach out to @Siqi Zhao if need be.

  • Aug 28, 2025ARC Meeting Minutes Published. The ARC continued reviews on CHERI, Supervisor Domains, SPMP, and IOPMP, clarified questions on Zihintitl/Zca and menvcfg behavior, and admitted Zvzip as a fast-track extension candidate.

  • Aug 28, 2025 @Ken Dockser reported that the the Governance Committee clarified the meeting attendance conundrum:

    • All scheduled meetings count (unless cancelled ahead of time), even if quorum isn’t reached.

      • If you attend, you get credit.

      • If you don’t attend, it counts against you.

  • Aug 28, 2025 PTE Reserved-for-Software Bits 60-59 Fast Track ISA,
    PTE Reserved-for-Software Bits 60-59 Fast Track IOMMU and
    Boot and Runtime Services (BRS) were Ratified by the Board of Directors

  • Aug 28, 2025 RVM TG and Instrumentation Trace TG were approved by the Board of Directors.

  • Aug 27, 2025 Crypto SIG elections concluded: @Markku-Juhani Saarinen elected Chair, @Nicolas Brunie elected Vice-Chair.

  • Aug 26, 2025 Meeting Disclosures in Chinese are now available here.

  • Aug 26, 2025 RISC-V Tech Journal was created.