EDACafe Industry Predictions for 2025 – RISC-V International

By: Andrea Gallo, Vice President of Technology, RISC-V International

Andrea Gallo

2024 was a very accomplished year for RISC-V International as we ratified 25 new specifications ranging from performance analysis and improvement to security and resilience, tracing and debugging.

The biggest accomplishment of all was the ratification of the RVA23 Profile specification, which signifies a major step forward in the evolution of RISC-V, further positioning the open standard as a strong contender for application processor dominance.

This Profile introduces crucial mandatory features like the Vector Extension, which accelerates math-intensive workloads, including AI/ML, cryptography, and compression / decompression, and the Hypervisor Extension, which will enable virtualization for enterprise workloads in both on-premises server and cloud computing applications and will also provide better security for mobile applications by separating secure and non-secure components.

By mandating these features, RVA23 ensures that future RISC-V application processors will have a consistent and powerful feature set, facilitating software development and deployment.

This past year, RISC-V International hosted RISC-V Summits in Europe, China and North America totaling 5,000 participants in person and more than 10,000 connecting remotely. And we’re witnessing more local RISC-V days happening across the globe full of RISC-V enthusiasts.

Brazil became a Premier Member of RISC-V International, underscoring the country’s commitment to open standards. Brazil’s decision to join RISC-V International supports the country’s vision for AI and semiconductors by fostering homegrown solutions while collaborating internationally. As the global semiconductor market becomes increasingly competitive, Brazil aims to differentiate itself by focusing on RISC-V-based chips and intellectual property creation for high-performance computing (HPC).

We feel strongly that 2025 will bring even greater progress. RISC-V expects continued growth in HPC and AI/ML worldwide as well as growing momentum in automotive, with multiple members collaborating in the Automotive Special Interest Group to release a set of recommendations to define specifications around security, functional safety, real-time, AI/ML for automotive.

At RISC-V International we also expect to progress fast on the Matrix Extensions, which are instrumental in boosting the performance of AI/ML inference for both NN accelerators as well as main application processors.

Also, we are witnessing strong interest from members in developing a microcontroller Profile to standardize the set of extensions mandated for common MCUs. This will help tool and library vendors focus on a smaller variance and more widely adopted set of microcontrollers, reducing their cost of building, testing and releasing their tools and software.

This year, RISC-V International will focus on completing the Server SoC and Server Platform specifications, on releasing the RISC-V Security Model documentation and publish a white paper that will elaborate on the various software layers, execution domains and how they would leverage the various technologies enabled by RISC-V.

We also expect an acceleration in the Certification initiative to build RISC-V ISA-compliant IPs, SoCs and platforms.

RISC-V International will continue to collaborate with RISE to enable and analyze critical complex workloads for our ecosystem. This does not only close any functional gaps, but it is already identifying areas for new extensions for future evolution of the RISC-V ISA.

At RISC-V International, we’re setting ambitious goals to drive RISC-V innovation forward in 2025. Our unwavering commitment to this incredible community ensures continued enhancements to the open standard. The future is bright, and we’re ready to make it happen!

Tags: AI_ML, AIApplications, AutomotiveTechnology, CertificationInitiative, GlobalCollaboration, HighPerformanceComputing, HPC, HypervisorExtension, MatrixExtensions, MicrocontrollerProfile, OpenStandards, RISC_V, RISC_VInnovation, RISC_VSummits, RVA23Profile, SecurityModel, SemiconductorInnovation, SemiconductorTrends2025, ServerSoC, VectorExtension, Virtualization

Category: Predictions

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