Abstract

RISC -V is a new instruction set architecture (ISA) that was originally designed to support computer architecture research and education, but for which we now have grander goals: Just as Linux has become the standard OS for most computing devices, we envision RISC -V becoming the standard ISA for all computing devices.

In this talk, I’ll first present our arguments why instruction sets want to be free, then introduce our motivations in designing a new ISA , give an overview of the RISC -V ISA , and conclude with current status and future plans.

Krste Asanovic is a Professor in the EECS Department at the University of California, Berkeley. He received a B.A. in Electrical and Information Sciences from Cambridge University in 1987 and a Ph.D. in Computer Science from U.C. Berkeley in 1998. He joined the EECS faculty at MIT in 1998, receiving tenure in 2005. Escaping the brutal Boston winters, he moved back to UC Berkeley and co-founded the Berkeley Parallel Computing Laboratory in 2007. He is currently the Director of the ASPIRE Lab, which includes 11 faculty and around 50 graduate students focused on software and hardware specialization for improved energy efficiency. His various research projects have designed and fabricated over a dozen experimental microprocessor prototypes.