Explore Free Ways to Master RISC-V Development Skills

1. Use Emulators

• QEMU: Supports RISC-V and can run RISC-V operating systems and programs (such as Ubuntu, Fedora, etc.).

qemu-system-riscv64 -machine virt -nographic \ -m 8192 -smp 4 -kernel /usr/lib/u-boot/qemu-riscv64_smode/uboot.elf \ -device virtio-net-device,netdev=eth0 \ -netdev user,id=eth0,hostfwd=tcp::6666-:22 \ -device virtio-rng-pci -drive \ file=./ubuntu-24.04.1-preinstalled-server-riscv64.img,format=raw,if=virtio

• Spike (Official RISC-V Emulator), the official emulator provided by the RISC-V Foundation, suitable for learning instruction set architecture. It is already embedded in the riscv-gnu-toolchain.

• Renode is a RISC-V simulation environment suitable for embedded/bare-metal development, capable of simulating multiple devices.

  Note: The images are sourced from CSDN.

  • xvisor is an open-source type-1 hypervisor, suitable for studying H extensions.
    
    Reference: https://xvisor.org

2. Online Experiences

• RISC-V Official Web Emulator RISC-V International

• HiFive Series
  
  (SiFive): such as HiFive Unleashed, HiFive1 Rev B, suitable for embedded development and running Linux.
• BeagleV is a RISC-V based single-board computer that can run Linux.
• Pine64 Star64, VisionFive 2 are SBCs (similar to Raspberry Pi) that support RISC-V architecture.
• Arduino Cinque is a RISC-V based Arduino development board.
• Development Board Drifting Program

4. Run RISC-V Linux Based on qemu-system-riscv64Experience Official Linux Distributions

• (such as Ubuntu RISC-V, Fedora RISC-V). For example:
https://ubuntu.com/download/risc-v

• Learn to Build RISC-V Cross-Compilation Toolchain in qemu
  
  such as GCC or LLVM, and write RISC-V assembly or C code.
  Learn to extend instructions in qemu, such as rvv, kvm, and P extensions.

5. Run RISC-V Cores on FPGA

• **Open-source RISC-V cores (such as Rocket, BOOM, VexRiscv)** can be implemented on FPGA.
• Use Xilinx or Intel FPGA to Build RISC-V Soft Cores
  
  such as LiteX + VexRiscv.

6. Use Commercial Chips Compatible with RISC-V

• such as Alibaba Xuantie (玄铁) C906/C910, T-Head Processors, some of which can run in development boards or simulation environments.
  Reference to Xuantie Cloud Laboratory: https://www.xrvm.cn/overview/cloudlab