RISC-V Support

[archanox]

I know there are issues[1..] in the specific repos for RISC-V bring up, but I'm hoping that there's a meta issue to show the progress of the bring up.

What incentivised me to make this issue is that RISC-V International has asked its members if there is anything missing from their "Ecosystem Landscape", dotnet is one glaring omission.

https://lists.riscv.org/g/allmem/message/220

One of the stipulations is that there is

Note that the submission form requires a link to a website/whitepaper/other proof of RISC-V support (existing, not just planned)

I'm lead to believe that several pieces have been merged and bring some support, but I haven't seen any evidence of RISC-V support outside of those pull requests.

Any help documenting the status and submitting an update proposal would be much appreciated.

1. https://github.com/dotnet/runtime/issues/36748
2. https://github.com/dotnet/runtime/issues/75749
3. https://github.com/dotnet/runtime/issues/84834

[0xStuart]

Unfortunately I don't think your going to get the answer your looking for right now. There doesn't seem to be much interest in .NET open source IoT platforms, which is likely the target market for RISC-V at the moment. Which is a shame, given the big push for AoT compilation.

If I could get the funding, i'd like to do a start-up based on this and the new low-cost RISC-V MCU/CPU hybrids. Alas, it's a hard sell.

[danmoseley]

I'm going to move to the runtime repo since anything would start there.

Edit: oh I can't transfer as it's in dotnet/* org. I do think that's the right place for discussions though (I see from your links you are already aware). It's more active than here.

[archanox]

@danmoseley yeah I was hoping to have a "meta" issue that overarches all the components of dotnet for the RISC-V platform, runtime, compiler, debugger etc etc

[archanox]

There doesn't seem to be much interest in .NET open source IoT platforms, which is likely the target market for RISC-V at the moment.

I'd have to politely disagree with this sentiment 🙂

I would suggest the nanoFramework would be more suitable for the domain you're interested in, which already has (some? all?) support for RISC-V.

With server grade RISC-V machines (rack mount 1U too) due out next month, having the full blown dotnet experience would be highly desirable. Including Dev and deployment.

[0xStuart]

I'd have to politely disagree with this sentiment slightly_smiling_face

Ah, well yeah I know its desirable. It's just this was posted on Microsofts repo, and there doesn't seem to be much interest from Microsoft to support RISC-V right now. Community efforts, which are showing signs of picking up, is slow.

There are some interesting low powered RISC-V SOC devises appearing, notably the BL808 which sit between MCUs and CPU's, which would be ideal for IoT, and full .NET (instead of nanoFramework).

[danmoseley]

@danmoseley yeah I was hoping to have a "meta" issue that overarches all the components of dotnet for the RISC-V platform, runtime, compiler, debugger etc etc

Yep of course it's fine to continue here, just wanted to point out that the committer folks usually involved in this kind of discussion (like @jkotas) are all generally in the other repo.

[jkotas]

https://github.com/dotnet/runtime/issues/36748 is currently the best place to track overall progress of the RISC-V .NET port and ask questions about it.