Open source Zephyr RTOS featured in RISC-V Getting Started Guide

In today’s rapidly evolving IoT and embedded ecosystem developers have the ability to choose from a variety of platforms and tools to design and build solutions that meet their unique needs and use cases. Zephyr Project is proud to provide developers and product makers with the freedom and flexibility of a full featured, customizable open source RTOS for resource constrained devices. That freedom includes empowering developers by providing a growing and diverse selection of supported architectures, boards and configurations. As of Zephyr 1.14 LTS the RTOS had more than 160 supported board configurations on 8 architectures, including RISC-V.

Guided by the same ethos, the RISC-V Foundation and its members have built a thriving ecosystem and helped to spur a new generation of innovative tools, software and hardware built around a free and open Instruction Set Architecture. The shared vision and deep commitment to open source has led to fruitful collaborations across the two projects. In the years since collaboration began, both projects have grown and reached important milestones.

Today we are excited to share a new resource intended to help members of both communities quickly get started using Zephyr OS on the RISC-V architecture. Created by Zephyr Project and RISC-V Foundation member Antmicro, The RISC-V Getting Started Guide showcases the strength of both platforms used together to create end to end open source solutions.

"Confirming our commitment to bringing open source into ever new technology areas, Antmicro has led the efforts to produce a RISC-V Getting Started Guide that is primarily addressed to software developers. Choosing Linux and Zephyr RTOS is crucial as their community-driven and vendor-neutral nature corresponds well with that of RISC-V", said Michael Gielda, VP Business Development at Antmicro.

"Having clear concise reference documentation makes it easier for newcomers to the RISC-V and Zephyr OS communities to create products faster. We’re excited to see what developers create using this guide and look forward to continued close collaboration between our organizations", said Kate Stewart, Senior Director of Strategic Program at the Linux Foundation.

The RISC-V Getting Started Guide shows users how to get started developing for the free and open RISC-V ISA, both in simulation and on physical implementations. The Guide focuses on running standard operating systems - Zephyr and Linux - on popular RISC-V platforms with minimum effort. The Zephyr-enabled platforms currently described in the Getting Started Guide include the SiFive HiFive1 and RISC-V SoftCPU Contest winner LiteX SoC with VexRiscv CPU running on the Future Electronics Avalanche board with a Microsemi PolarFire FPGA or in Antmicro’s open source Renode simulation framework. The Guide also provides a generic QEMU simulation target supporting RISC-V.

Thanks to Antmicro and the RISC-V Foundation the Guide is now available to serve as a starting-point for the global RISC-V and Zephyr communities, as well as anyone interested in switching to a fully open design approach - from open ISA through open tooling, software, hardware and FPGA.

This guide is an open source collaboration and contributions are welcome via GitHub. If you have questions about using the Guide or Zephyr OS, please contact us via the Zephyr Project Slack channel. What’s more, Antmicro, SiFive and Microchip are sponsoring the upcoming RISC-V Workshop in Zurich - you can find them on the showfloor to receive more information on getting started with Zephyr on RISC-V.

Learn more about the RISC-V Foundation
Get the latest release of Zephyr OS
Download the RISC-V Getting Started Guide