CHIPS Alliance and RISC-V International Invite the RISC-V Community to Participate in Updating a New Unified Memory Architecture Standard

New joint working group will enhance the OmniXtend Cache Coherency architecture

SAN FRANCISCO, March 24, 2020 – RISC-V International, a non-profit corporation controlled by its members to drive the adoption and implementation of the free and open RISC-V instruction set architecture (ISA), and CHIPS Alliance, the leading consortium advancing common and open hardware for interfaces, processors and systems, today announced a joint collaboration to update the OmniXtend Cache Coherency specification and protocol, along with building out developer tools for OmniXtend.

As part of this collaboration, RISC-V International and CHIPS Alliance have formed a new OmniXtend working group which will focus on creating an open, cache coherent, unified memory standard for multicore compute architectures. The group will update the OmniXtend specification and protocol, build out architectural simulation models and a reference register-transfer level (RTL) implementation, as well as create a verification workbench. These tools for an open, standard unified memory coherency bus leveraging OmniXtend will make it easier for designers to take advantage of OmniXtend for data-centric applications.

“As RISC-V International develops implementation independent specifications and ecosystem components, it is an important priority for us to ensure that whatever we develop will work with emerging and established standards. The joint working group will interact with various RISC-V groups to review the OmniXtend protocol with an emphasis on cache management and paying close attention to coherency enablement for RISC-V members,” said Mark Himelstein, CTO at RISC-V International. “As a result of this joint effort, the RISC-V community will have the tools they need to leverage an open, coherent, unified memory standard for all types of data-centric applications.”

“The newly formed OmniXtend working group will set the standard for open, coherent heterogeneous compute architectures. We plan to allow for a mixture of hardware IP blocks, giving developers more design flexibility so they can choose what works best for their specific application needs,” said Rob Mains, General Manager at CHIPS Alliance. “We encourage the RISC-V community to get involved in this important initiative which will open new design possibilities with OmniXtend.”

Dejan Vucinic of Western Digital will be giving a talk on OmniXtend at the CHIPS Alliance Spring Workshop on March 30, 2021. The event will also cover the AIB chiplet ecosystem, SWeRV Core support, FPGA tooling and much more. To register for this free virtual event, please visit: https://events.linuxfoundation.org/chips-alliance-spring-workshop/register/.

To learn more about the OmniXtend working group, please visit: https://lists.chipsalliance.org/g/riscv-omnixtend-wg.

About RISC-V International

RISC-V is a free and open ISA enabling a new era of processor innovation through open collaboration. Founded in 2015, RISC-V International is composed of more than 1,300 members building the first open, collaborative community of software and hardware innovators powering a new era of processor innovation. The RISC-V ISA delivers a new level of free, extensible software and hardware freedom on architecture, paving the way for the next 50 years of computing design and innovation.

RISC-V International, a non-profit organization controlled by its members, directs the future development and drives the adoption of the RISC-V ISA. Members of RISC-V International have access to and participate in the development of the RISC-V ISA specifications and related HW / SW ecosystem.

About the CHIPS Alliance

The CHIPS Alliance is an organization which develops and hosts high-quality, open source hardware code (IP cores), interconnect IP (physical and logical protocols), and open source software development tools for design, verification, and more. The main aim is to provide a barrier-free collaborative environment, to lower the cost of developing IP and tools for hardware development. The CHIPS Alliance is hosted by the Linux Foundation. For more information, visit chipsalliance.org.

About the Linux Foundation

The Linux Foundation was founded in 2000 and has since become the world’s leading home for collaboration on open source software, open standards, open data, and open hardware. Today, the Foundation is supported by more than 1,000 members and its projects are critical to the world’s infrastructure, including Linux, Kubernetes, Node.js and more. The Linux Foundation focuses on employing best practices and addressing the needs of contributors, users, and solution providers to create sustainable models for open collaboration. For more information, visit linuxfoundation.org.