RISC-V is an emerging open (source) ISA for embedded processors initiated by U.C. Berkeley and entered the commercial world 5 years ago by forming the RISC-V Foundation, which became RISC-V International Association in April 2020. Andes Technology is a 15-year old CPU IP company based on Hsinchu Science Park. It developed 3 generation ISA of its own before adopting RISC-V as its 5th generation ISA in 2016. In the RISC-V World, Andes is the CPU IP vendor with most commercial experience.
In this talk, we will give some background about Andes, RISC-V and RISC-V International and introduce open source activities relating to RISC-V and Andes involvement there. Then, we will use a couple examples to illustrate how RISC-V open source works in the commercial world. In conclusion, we will discuss the potential of RISC-V and list open source opportunities in RISC-V for the enthusiasts.
The talk will be given based on Andes’ 5-year involvement in RISC-V Open ISA, including open source SW as well as RISC-V extension spec.
About Charlie Su
Dr. Charlie Su is a cofounder of Andes Technology Corporation, where he is in charge of R&D and technical marketing. Under his leadership, Andes developed processor IP solutions based on its own ISA for the first 12 years before announcing its first RISC-V processor in 2017 and now is the main force to take RISC-V mainstream. Today, the volume of SoC based on Andes processors is over 1 billion pieces annually. Charlie spent over 12 years in the Silicon Valley with various technical and management positions at Sun Microsystems, Afara Websystems, C-Cube Microsystems, SGI/MIPS, and Intergraph. He made key contributions to several successful processors such as the Sun multi-core multi-threading Ultrasparc T1 and T2 processors, the C-Cube high-performance E-series MPEG media processors, the MIPS out-of-order R10K families, and the Intergraph Clipper VLIW processor. Prior to starting Andes in 2005, he led the CPU and DSP IP development in Faraday Technology as Chief Architect for about 2 years. Charlie obtained his Ph.D. in Computer Science from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, M.S. in Computer Science from National Tsing-Hua University, and B.S. in Electrical Engineering from National Taiwan University.