1 Architecture Review Committee
2 Dotted Line Committee
3 Extensions
4 Governing Committee
5 Internal Review
6 Public Review
7 Ratification Packages
8 Profiles
9 Platforms
10 Specification Author
11 Specification Initiator
12 Specification Owner
13 Specification States

Architecture Review Committee

A RISC-V special committee that generally has the responsibility for reviewing all ISA architecture on its technical merits to make sure new extensions conform to the broader architecture and vision of the RISC-V Platform. This committee also owns the review and approval of Fast Track specification proposals. For non-ISA documents, the Architecture Review Committee further plays the role of general specification reviewer.

Information about the Architecture Review Committee can be found on the RISC-V Architecture Review wiki page.

Dotted Line Committee

The Dotted-line Committee is a co-sponsor committee that provides additional, technical oversight for TGs. Typically, this occurs for ISA extensions which need additional domain expertise such as Security, Firmware, etc.

Note: Dotted Line Committee are not required nor defined by the RISC-V Policies and Procedures, but there were an effective construct which has been continued forward in practice.

Extensions

Extensions are a group of instructions and state (registers, CSRs) and the behaviors for those instructions and state. The extension is defined by a specification (or chapter in a specification) and a formal model in SAIL. Extensions are governed and approved by the TSC and ratified by the Board of Directors and extensions along with their corresponding task groups are governed by their committee and their charter is governed and approved by TSC.

An extension has a name. The name is governed, allocated and approved by the Unprivileged IC and appears in a chapter in the Unprivileged specification. Extension names may be individual alphabetic letters or may begin with a [ZSM]<string> for RISC-V extensions and X<string> for custom vendor specific non-standard extensions.

Governing Committee

The Governing Committee is the parent committee for one or more TGs or SIGs within a common area of expertise, e.g. Privileged ISA, Security, etc. and provides sponsorship and governance for the group. The Governing Committee Chair and Vice-chair work to create the sub-group, organize all groups, navigate the RISC-V processes, and deliver the work products created by their sub-groups (strategy, gap analysis, specifications, code, etc.) to the TSC.

Internal Review

The phase in the specification development process where comments are generally solicited from RISC-V members across various communities before a document goes to the Architectural Review Committee. Internal Reviews generally remain open for 14 days.

Templates and directions for announcing an Internal Review are available here.

Public Review

The phase in the specification development process where comments are generally solicited from non-members. Public Reviews generally remain open for 30 days.

Templates and directions for announcing a Public Review are available here.

RISC-V Public Review documents have spent considerable time being developed prior to the Public Review phase such that significant changes are generally unanticipated and considered unlikely. Thus, those members wishing to engage in deep technical discussion and to influence a desire should be working in the Task Group (TG) which is developing the specification, not waiting for Public Review to provide feedback.

Ratification Packages

Extensions are grouped together into a set which is documented in a single specification and ratified at the same time. This group is the Ratification Package or “Rat Pack” for short.

Because non-ISA specifications generally are grouped by functionality and because non-ISA specifications continue to be maintained as-reviewed (not included in another document), the concept of Ratification Packages does not apply to non-ISA specifications.

Profiles

Profiles are a collection of extensions which is more broad than the Ratification Package. The source repository for the RISC-V Profiles specification is https://github.com/riscv/riscv-profiles .

Platforms

Platforms define a set of requirements (including Profiles and other hardware and software standards) for interoperability between software and hardware and among all software distributions. The source repository for the RISC-V Platform specification is https://github.com/riscv-admin/server-platform .

Specification Author

The primary writer, editor, and organizer of a specification.

The Specification Owner works with the Author to help drive a specification through the lifecycle but the Author is not directly responsible for interfacing with the Governing Committee or RISC-V Staff, but likely will be involved in the specification review with the Architecture Review Committee.

Specification Initiator

The requester of an extension or specification. Anyone can request that a committee consider creating a new specification (and Task Group) or Fast Track specification.

The requirements to start a specification or associated Task Group are defined in the RISC-V Policies and Procedures.

Specification Owner

The first point of contact for the specification. The Owner is responsible for driving the specification through the lifecycle and ensuring all the work gets completed to ratify the specification.

For standard (non-Fast Track) specifications, the Owner is the Chair of the Task Group. For Fast Track specifications, the Owner is typically the Specification Initiator but the Governing Committee may identify an alternative Owner.

If the Task Group members cannot help, the Owner needs to escalate to the Governing Committee to resolve the resource gaps. The Governing Committee in turn may escalate to the RISC-V Staff, who may escalate to TSC, the RISC-V CEO, or the Board of Directors.

Resources should generally be identified in the Plan Milestone and any gaps identified during the review by the Governing Committee.

Governing Committees should not sponsor a Fast Track without an identified Owner.

Specification States

The RISC-V specification states are defined on the Specification States wiki page at: https://riscv.org/specifications/ratified/

The text associated with each of these states should appear in each specification, in the front matter, such that readers have appropriate expectations. Documents created by the RISC-V Staff based on docs-spec-template will contain the state information in the :revremark: text (usually found in the [[header]] section). Additionally, this text will be in be contained in a [WARNING] in the Preamble, just ahead of the copyright and licensing information. It should look something like:

[WARNING]

.This document is in the link:http://riscv.org/spec-state[Development state]

====

Assume everything can change. This draft specification will change before being accepted as standard, so implementations made to this draft specification will likely not conform to the future standard.