On June 21, RISC-V International announced four specifications. These include RISC-V E-Trace, RISC-V SBI, RISC-V UEFI specification, and RISC-V Zmmul multiplication-only extensions.

The open standards organization RISC-V International, in 2021, approved 16 specifications, composed of more than 40 RISC-V extensions. To consolidating these achievements, today the group announced the approval for the four new specifications and extensions at Embedded World 2022. The announcement also included a notice that six more specifications for vertical applications were in the pipeline.

The E-Trace specification defines an efficient method of processor tracing. Adopting the branch trace technology, the scheme is ideal for debugging any type of application – from small miniature embedded designs to high-performance computers.

The second specification, the Privileged Binary Interface (SBI), establishes a firmware layer between the hardware platform and the operating system kernel. This is implemented as an application binary interface in (S mode or VS mode).

The third one, RISC-V UEFI protocol specification, is the porting of existing UEFI standards to the RISC-V platform.

Himelstein noted that these new normative efforts stand in stark contrast to last year's 2021 normative approval efforts for RISC-V, which are all about the RISC-V directive and directive-related specifications. "All the while, we're still looking at all the other things we're announcing today and moving forward," he said. "And none of this happen overnight."