Florian "Flo" Wohlrab, CEO of OpenHW Group, leads a Canadianbased nonprofit that operates globally, focusing on opensource hardware. The organization specializes in creating industrialgrade, fully opensource RISCV cores that are thoroughly verified and documented, all available under the Apache 2.0 license. This setup allows users to download the necessary files, including verification suites, from their GitHub repository to design their own chips and products. OpenHW Group invites users to become members and collaborate with other industry players like Silicon Labs, Talis, and Axella, to further develop and verify RISCV IP for industrialgrade integrated circuits (ICs).

In the RISCV ecosystem, OpenHW Group occupies a unique position. While RISCV International provides the specifications, numerous vendors offer RISCV solutions. At Computex 2024 in Taiwan, vendors like Andes Technology showcase their commercial RISCV offerings. Similarly, in the US and Europe, companies like SciFive and Codasip are prominent. OpenHW Group distinguishes itself as one of the few fully opensource, commercially viable providers. Their RISCV IP is designed to be used in ICs that can be produced in large quantities, exemplified by their CV40 core, which has been shipped over 500 million times. This core is similar in performance to an ARM M4 and is part of their opensource offerings.

One of OpenHW Group's notable achievements is the wide adoption of their cores, particularly the CV40, which has reached 500 million shipments, although the actual number might be higher due to the opensource nature of the project where users are not required to report their usage. The CV40's performance is comparable to an ARM M4, and it is often used in products without royalties. The organization hopes users find the cores beneficial enough to join their community, which offers networking opportunities and collaboration with other members.

OpenHW Group offers several core families, including the deeply embedded CV2, the CV4 comparable to ARM M4, and the CVA6 suitable for settop boxes, similar to ARM A53/A55 cores. They provide comprehensive verification tools and documentation to ensure bugfree implementations. Partners like OSM in the UK and Beijing Institute of Open Source in China contribute to compiler development, including LLVM and GCC. Companies like Amazon and Red Hat also participate, enhancing freeRTOS and Linux compatibility for these cores.

The group is preparing for future technologies, ensuring that new chips are ready when needed. This includes working with partners like Red Hat to develop Linuxcapable systems on FPGA instances in Amazon data centers. This collaboration allows highperformance applications to be ported to RISCV, demonstrating the group's forwardthinking approach and strong industry support.

RISCV technology is increasingly integrated into various devices, including smartphones. Wohlrab illustrates that RISCV cores are already used in touch controllers, WiFi modules, and storage controllers within smartphones, though the main processors are yet to adopt RISCV widely. Companies like Qualcomm and Google are working towards integrating Android with RISCV, indicating a future where fully RISCV powered phones could become a reality.

Although specific manufacturers and their usage of RISCV are not always clear, Wohlrab notes that many Chinese manufacturers, such as Oppo, incorporate RISCV in their devices through components like touch controllers and WiFi chips. This widespread but often unnoticed adoption shows the versatile application of RISCV in modern technology.

For software, OpenHW Group supports a variety of operating systems running on RISCV microcontrollers, from bare metal to realtime operating systems (RTOS) like Amazon's FreeRTOS. They also work with Zephyr and ThreadX, and for higher performance applications, Linux distributions such as Fedora and Ubuntu are being developed. The group's efforts ensure a broad software ecosystem, supporting both lowend and highend applications in the RISCV space.

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