Creating a custom processor with RISC-V

Article By : Richard Quinnell

The RISC-V instruction set architecture is an open framework that allows design of a customized processor that can leverage tools and software libraries created for the standard versions.

With its blend of open-source freedoms with the benefits of standardization, the RISC-V (risk-five) Foundation is attracting widespread industry interest. Its core specifications are stable and on the cusp of ratification, soft- and hard CPU cores along with chips, development boards, and tools are commercially available, and major companies have started adopting RISC-V to replace their custom architectures. A key feature in the architecture’s appeal is that CPU developers can adapt RISC-V functionality to their needs without sacrificing the applicability of tools and libraries created for the base standard. The key to that adaptation lies in understanding RISC-V’s modular instruction set architecture.

RISC-V started as the fifth iteration of reduced instruction set computing (RISC) design efforts at UC Berkeley, but quickly evolved from academic research to a movement seeking to redefine the electronics industry’s processing hardware design approach. Currently, system developers either must choose a proprietary CPU architecture, often optimized to a specific application space, or design their own CPU architecture. By pursuing their own design, however, developers give up the extensive support ecosystems that established CPUs have developed. There is a compromise: adapting a proprietary CPU architecture to gain customization while retaining much of the support ecosystem. This compromise, unfortunately, is impractical for many design teams due to high architecture licensing fees for proprietary architectures.

The RISC-V initiative seeks to offer designers an alternative that permits customization and innovation while retaining many benefits of standardization. To do so, the RISC-V Foundation maintains and drives community development of the modular, open source, RISC-V processor instruction set architecture (ISA), which aims to meet application needs spanning embedded systems to server farms and beyond. The architecture’s specifications are free to download, and developers are free to implement designs based on the ISA without paying a license fee. Nor are they obligated to make their designs available to others, as with some open source initiatives. It is the ISA that is open source; individual designs, hardware architectures, and customizations can remain proprietary if developers wish.

The initiative has gained considerable momentum. There are now RISC-V chips and cores available, both commercial and open source. Companies like SiFive, GreenWaves Technologies, and Microsemi have development boards for their RISC-V implementations. Development tools, software libraries, and operating system ports (including Linux) are all part of the current RISC-V support ecosystem. Leveraging all this support for a custom design, though, begins with a close look at the RISC-V ISA’s structure.

Base specifications
Two key documents define the RISC-V ISA: The User-level ISA Specification and the Privileged ISA Specification. Within these are the definitions of both base requirements and numerous standardized, modular extensions. The standard extensions are modular in that implementing any given standard extension in a CPU design will not interfere with the implementation of any other standard extensions. Some extensions may build on others, however, requiring that base extension be implemented as part of the desired extension.

The overall design is register-based, calling for 31 general-purpose registers where all operations take place, with load-and-store access to the general memory space. Instruction sets have been defined for 32-bit, 64-bit, and 128-bit address spaces, with an additional, reduced-register-count, 32-bit instruction set defined to specifically target smaller gate count implementations for embedded system designs. Apart from the presence of additional instructions to manipulate longer word lengths, and register size matching the address space, the instruction coding for these variations is all the same.

Figure 1 shows in schematic form how the core specifications and standard extensions interact. Many of the specifications are now frozen by the RISC-V Foundation, ensuring that implementations based on them will remain valid as the ISA evolves. This ensures that software written today will run on similar RISC-V cores forever. Some extensions are still in draft mode and so are subject to change. A few are reserved, i.e., placeholders awaiting future development. The 32- and 64-bit base integer ISAs are frozen, for instance, with the 128-bit and embedded variations still in draft form.

The base integer ISA (I) is the foundation on which all else is built and must be present in any implementation. In addition to the base integer ISA, all standard RISC-V implementations must include at least the machine-level portion of the Privileged ISA; the supervisor-level (S) and hypervisor portions are standard extensions. However, the Privileged ISA is defined in such a way that developers can implement a custom form of privileged code execution without affecting the base integer ISA, should they wish.

Figure 1 The RISC-V ISA forms a modular collection of instructions that can be implemented in a CPU design without interfering with one another.

Enhancing base functionality with standard extensions
The base integer (I) and machine-level privileged ISAs provide all the functionality a basic, general-purpose CPU requires. Developers can augment this base capability, though, by adding extensions to the ISA. Custom extensions are always possible, but there are standard extensions that the technical task groups in the RISC-V Foundation manage, having determined they have broad appeal to the design community and that their instructions do not conflict with other standard extensions. Developers are thus able to freely include any of the standard extensions they require in their design, without concern for conflicts in the instruction coding. These standard extensions include:

[Continue reading on EDN US: Privileged ISA]

Rich Quinnell is an engineer, writer, and Global Managing Editor for the AspenCore Network.

For more in-depth insight into technical and business aspects of RISC-V, check out these other articles in this AspenCore Special Project.

RISC-V on the Verge of Broad Adoption
RISC-V’s open ISA aims to redefine how processors get designed by enabling an ecosystem that supports both standardized and customized CPUs spanning a broad application space. Solidifying specifications, increasing adoption, and growing software and development support are helping clear the path to that goal.

Introducing RISC-V and RISC-V tools
It seems like everyone is talking about RISC-V processors these days, but what exactly is RISC-V and what tools are available to designers?

RISC-V Climbs Software Mountain
The open-source architecture faces a long road through software standards from its beachhead as an SoC controller to use as a host processor.

Can Arm Survive the RISC-V challenge?
Arm offers limited flexibility compared to RISC-V or MIPS. No one wants to spend months negotiating license terms under today’s cost and time-to-market pressures.

SiFive Sees Big Year for RISC-V
This startup expects many design wins and new players.

Open Source Hardware Benefits Procurement Practices
The advent of processor options based the RISC-V ISA may delight electronics engineers and designers, but open-source hardware presents a number of opportunities for enhanced supply chain and procurement efforts as well.

Can MIPS Leapfrog RISC-V?
MIPS will become a bona fide open-source ISA. But given that MIPS will offer “commercial-ready” instruction sets with “industrial-strength” architecture, the hardware developers MIPS would attract are bigger and more mature companies, including current Arm licensees, according to Wave.

Related articles:

Subscribe to Newsletter