Q: What does two FTE mean in terms of contribution?
A: If a company selects the two FTE (full time employee) option, then the expectation is that the company is contributing to one or more RISE projects that are part of the RISE TSC roadmap. The cumulative work by a collection of employees should be commensurate with the amount of work that two full time employees would accomplish if dedicated to work on RISE only.
Q: How are contributions tracked?
A: The RISE TSC leadership will escalate to the RISE Governing Board if a company is not providing sufficient contributions. Then a RISE Governing Board representative(s) will discuss with that company and determine how to proceed.
Q: How is RISE affiliated with RISC-V International?
A: RISE is a sister organization to RISC-V International. To become a RISE member, it is required to also be a member of RISC-V International. This ensures that we can have transparent communication about new RISC-V standards in development by RISC-V International.
Q: Where can I see what RISE is working on?
A: The RISE technical wiki is used by the RISE TSC and associated Work Groups to track priorities and projects, and is publicly accessible by everyone (read only access).
Q: Do I need to be a RISE sponsor to contribute?
A: RISE is contributing to upstream projects directly and not creating separate github repositories, bug trackers or alternate discussion forums for design and implementation discussions. An organization or person that is not a member of RISE may contribute towards the same deliverables that RISE commits to working on in upstream projects.
Q: When will Governing Board seats be available again?
A: RISE will hold elections every two years for roughly half of the Governing Board seats each year starting in 2024. The next election will be in 2025. Information will be provided to RISE Sponsors ahead of future elections in the case that a Sponsor would like to run for a seat on the Governing Board.
Q: Can I Participate in the TSC if I’m not a Sponsor?
A: It’s not possible to be part of the RISE Technical Steering Committee or associated Work Groups without sponsoring, i.e. without being a RISE member. Sponsorship/membership brings resources to the table and a commitment to pitch in on prioritized projects, which provides the privilege of guiding where those resources are applied. The actual work done by members of a particular category (e.g. kernel, compiler, firmware) is, of course, done upstream and withharmony to other ecosystem stakeholders (upstream projects, task groups, other non-RISE companies, etc), but the actual setting of priorities is done by the TSC and shaped by RISE member interests.
Q:Are there standard reference platforms that I can validate my code against?
A: The RVI community is in the process of coming up with a platform spec this year that will standardize platforms. The first platform spec to come out is expected to be the server platform. This server platform will incorporate hardware features, boot & runtime features and platform security features. In the meantime, there are platforms available from multiple vendors like the HiFive Unmatched board from SiFive. StarFive VisionFive 2, AllWinner etc that could be used for general software development.
Q:What emulation environments are available for code testing?
A: QEMU is a well supported simulation/emulation platform for code testing. On Ubuntu with the qemu-user-binfmt package and docker installed, you can get a RISC-V environment with this command: docker run-it–platform=riscv64 riscv64/ubuntu:22.04 /bin/bash
