According to ijiwei.com, a series of RISC-V-related patches contributed by Beijing ESWIN Computing Technology Co., Ltd. (hereinafter referred to as “ESWIN Computing”) have been merged into the source code by GNU, OpenSBI, OP-TEE and other major open source communities. 

According to industry insiders, it is of great significance that RISC-V-related patches are merged into the source codes of these major open source communities. As the most popular open source tool chain, RISC-V patches supplemented and improved in GNU will assist developers to better implement RISC-V project development and debugging work. The OpenSBI project has been committed to providing an standardized open source reference implementation for RISC-V platform-specific firmware, which is an important and indispensable step for RISC-V IC manufacturers to build a sound and efficient development environment. OP-TEE, a widely used security operating system, can help realize an open source Trusted Execution Environment (TEE) to ensure code confidentiality and tamper-proof. While OP-TEE has only supported the ARM architecture traditionally, the RISC-V ecosystem is on course to fill in the gap of TEE OS in the wake of the inclusion of RISC-V patches. The RISC-V patches contributed by ESWIN Computing to these open source communities mainlines will further enhance the autonomy and standardization of RISC-V software system adaptation, laying a solid foundation for the long-term development of RISC-V.

As an open source instruction set architecture (ISA), RISC-V is closely interconnected with the entire open source ecosystem. RISC-V-based projects use open source processor ICs or software to varying degrees, which will impact the development of open source software to a certain extent. This is a primary reason why RISC-V IC manufacturers contribute patches to open source communities.

Bao Yungang, deputy director of the Institute of Computing Technology at the Chinese Academy of Sciences and chief scientist of Beijing Institute of Open Source Chip, said, “The participation and active contribution in the open source communities of IC companies such as ESWIN Computing means that the upstream and downstream companies along the RISC-V industry chain in China are accelearting the improvement of the RISC-V open source software ecosystem chain, and gradually building a technology platform aligned with the international open source community.”  

There are data to show that ESWIN Computing started out on independent development of RISC-V computing architecture in 2019, and has now developed a full-stack platform integrating RISC-V software and hardware. On the hardware side, ESWIN Computing has completed the development of serialized 32-bit embedded core processors, which have been applied to dozens of self-developed IC products. The 64-bit RISC-V application processor core has been verified, and related IC products will be used in a wide range of scenarios such as multimedia, edge computing, wearables, etc. On the software side, ESWIN Computing has continuously optimized and enriched the RISC-V software stack, and developed a diverse RISC-V software ecosystem such as firmware, operating system kernel, basic operating system, tool chain, middleware, application software, etc.

Dr. Lu Feng, the Co-CTO of ESWIN Computing, said, “In recent years, ESWIN Computing has done a lot of work in the RISC-V software ecosystem. At present, we have completed the adaptation and migration of RISC-V architecture including tool chain, firmware, Linux, TEE OS and Android operating systems. In October this year, we decided to contribute the accumulation over the course of IC design and software development to the community. Within one month, dozens of patches have been submitted to several major open source communities mainlines, and more than ten of them have been officially accepted after reviews. In the future, we will keep up our efforts in security, kernel, middleware, application software and other fields, so as to play a greater role in building the RISC-V software ecosystem.”

(Source: ijiwei.com)