Meeting Thursday, October 5, 2023

[Jeff Scheel]

All,

Our next meeting will be Thursday, September 7, 2023 at 12:00 UTC.  Local times:

• 8 PM China
• 5:30 PM India Standard Time
• 2 PM Central European Time
• 8 AM Eastern U.S.
• 5 AM Pacific U.S.

Here's the meeting link: 
https://www.google.com/calendar/event?eid=MzV2cDA2YW5wM21ra2YwbDkyNXVoOWdjbzlfMjAyMzEwMDVUMTIwMDAwWiB0ZWNoLm1lZXRpbmdzQHJpc2N2Lm9yZw&ctz=UTC

The agenda will focus on standard topics:

1. Program updates from RISC-V
2. Board and Project updates
3. Review of Google Sites updates and drafts (Google Sites)
4. What's cool? (time permitting)
   

Any topics, updates, or information can as always either be raised at the beginning of the meeting or by adding it to our agenda document, Dev Board Group Minutes.
-Jeff

--

Jeff Scheel (he/him/his)

Director of Technical Programs, RISC-V International

[Jeff Scheel]

Another lively meeting today.  Thanks!

Per convention, the official updates are in the Meeting Document and I'm attaching a copy here.  Please question, correct, and extend the information in either the document of this email as you deem appropriate.

Attendees: Jeff, Felix, Weifu, Isaac, Heinrich, Daniel, Weiwu, Axel

Board Updates:

• Milk-V

• Milk-V Vega

• OpenWRT can work on it , PLCT intern has tried it. But the kernel needs upstream. 

Program Updates:

• Arch Linux

• [core] 256 / 264 (96.97%)

• [extra] 12597 / 13383 (94.13%)

• Fixes support of QEMU virtio block devices attached to pci bus: https://gitlab.archlinux.org/archlinux/mkinitcpio/mkinitcpio/-/merge_requests/264

• Encountered a lot of new QEMU related crashes with latest QEMU 8.1.1: https://gitlab.com/qemu-project/qemu/-/issues/1913 https://gitlab.com/qemu-project/qemu/-/issues/1908 https://gcc.gnu.org/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=111448 https://gitlab.com/qemu-project/qemu/-/issues/1921 

• Finished DDE (Deepin desktop environment) v23 packaging and it just works on Pioneer Box

• Successfully run Minecraft with HMCL on Pioneer Box

• 119 PRs merged: ref. Some noted items:

• Code OSS

• Chromium 117.0.5938.92

• OpenSSL: reconfigure to enable RISC-V optimization codes

• Electron 25

• Electron 24

• Linux 6.5.2.arch1

• go 2:1.21.1 - Workaround AUIPC+JALR mis-optimized

• rust 1.72.1 - Pin cc dependency of src/bootstrap to 1.0.77

• gcc 13.2.1 - cherry-pick for fixing glibc compatibility

• Fedora

• Fedora 38 Package number 22809/23285 [97.96%](less 440 srpms left)

• The final Fedora 38 repo is under development(fixing dependencies, updating some packages), some packages(100+ rpms) can not be installed, because of dependency. 

• Debugging Deepin desktop, all the packages are built, install successfully, show desktop, but can not work, because of qt5 bug  

• Chromium can work on Fedora 38

• LiveCD image is under development, you can install Fedora with LiveCD SD card. There is a issue when install kernel

• RV32 bootstrap is done, New 64ILP32 is under development (PLCT intern). (Best performance for memory footprint smaller than 1 GB.)

• K8s demo in RISC-V summit 

• Canonical

• No updates on Pioneer box.  Works when warm, not cold.  Great for compiles.

• PineTab-V looks like a good platform.

• Working on updating to 6.5 kernel for VF V2 which should help PCI-e and USB support.  Graphics output still not supported. 

• Actively participating in Profiles discussion which are presently focused on use of C extension (all 16-bit codes).

• R9

• Experimenting with paging and recursive page tables

• Haven’t fully grasped it yet 😬

• oreboot + LinuxBoot

• Still working on HSM (Hart State Machine) thingies

• We count on Linux getting patches in to handle unaligned access

• We delegate it in oreboot, just like everything else

• https://lore.kernel.org/linux-riscv/CALs-Hss+OK-vJy_ZKjVbGh7r...@mail.gmail.com/T/#t 

• Discussed with others at Kernel Recipes, got this patch series to be worked on again 😀 (previous one few months prior had no reply)

• See https://lore.kernel.org/linux-riscv/ for other series

• Struggling with StarFive’s vs upstream Linux kernel; the latter hangs on MDIO read (ethernet MAC->PHY communication), while it works with StarFive’s kernel with a random phandle added as phy-supply in the ethernet DT nodes (whyever)

• Daniel got two Milk-V Duo \o/

• Ordered another Duo and 3 Duo IO boards (RPi form factor!) as well as (pre)ordered Mars (also RPi form factor) and Mars CM (CM should work in MNT Reform laptop) from https://arace.tech/collections/milk-v a month ago - no shipping confirmation yet 🙁 likely because of holidays 🏝️

• would also like a Milk-V Meles (also RPi form factor), though not available (yet/anymore?); https://arace.tech/products/milk-v-meles 

• Firmware

• Platform System Interface specification started documenting mask ROMs, loaders, and boot flows, using RISC-V in examples

• https://github.com/platform-system-interface/psi-spec/blob/main/mask-roms-loaders.md 

• RISC-V

• August status report: link

• 17 participants

• Continues well

• Unmatched

• All boards delivered

• VisionFive V2

• Final 8 projects identified and shipments on their way.

• ROMA laptop

• 2 received

• Reviewing projects

• Pioneer box

• Yocto has received their box and is doing bringup.  

• Not sure about SUSE box.  

• Awaiting status from Yocto and SUSE before picking next projects.

• New partnerships have been proposed from Alibaba (2) and Sipeed

• Program sizes proposed as donations of 30 boards, each

• Working details

What’s cool?:

• https://www.theregister.com/2023/09/15/intel_fpga_updates/ - Intel releases the Nios V microcontroller and makes it available for free in their FPGA offerings.

• https://www.cnbc.com/2023/09/14/arm-ipo-what-is-risc-v-and-why-does-arm-call-the-rival-product-a-risk.html - Discussion about RISC-V impacts on ARM IPO.

• https://www.allaboutcircuits.com/news/cpu-designer-jim-keller-rethinks-risc-v-ai-processing-at-tenstorrent/ - Tenstorrent and Jim Keller background

• https://punkx.org/overflow/ - RISC-V Assembly Board Game

• Milk-V Vega - RISC-V Network router from Milk-V

Miscellaneous notes:

• Floating point issue being worked: https://github.com/revyos/revyos/issues/17

-Jeff

--

Jeff Scheel (he/him/his)

Director of Technical Programs, RISC-V International