cross-posted from: https://lemmy.ml/post/28215475
Merged on Friday for the nearly-over Linux 6.15 merge window were the RISC-V CPU architecture updates for this next kernel release.
RISC-V with Linux 6.15 brings build improvements thanks to a re-architecting of the Kconfig build system options around RISC-V for selecting sub-architecture features.
For the Linux 6.15 kernel with RISC-V there is also support for building relocatable non-MMU kernels, support for huge PFNMAPS to improve TLB utilization, support for runtime constants, new RISC-V instructions supported, and a variety of fixes.
I love that RiSC-V is already so well supported in the Linux kernel even though the hardware is not really out there yet. When decent hardware does arrive, a fairly mature ecosystem will be waiting for it.
Compare that to ARM which took quite a while. There is already more of a culture of getting device support into the mainline for RISC-V than for ARM even now.
I do think decent RISC-V kit is coming. The existing players like SciFive are getting there, we know big players like Qualcomm and Samsung have projects, and future disruptors like AheadComputing see RISC-V as their attack vector on the current industry. And for sure China is going to surprise with a decent RISC-V offering at some point—maybe Alibaba, maybe Huawei, or maybe someone else.
Ai
