HIRAIN Joins the "Wujian Alliance" to Promote the Development of the RISC-V Software Ecosystem

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On February 28, the 2025 Xuantie RISC-V Ecosystem Conference, hosted by Alibaba's DAMO Academy, was held in Beijing. Hundreds of global enterprises and institutions, including the Institute of Software at the Chinese Academy of Sciences, Nari Group, PHA (Potevio) Basic Software, HIRAIN, Synopsys, Cadence, and Siemens EDA, gathered together. With the development of RISC-V reaching new heights, Xuantie is accelerating its layout for a full-chain "high-performance + AI" RISC-V ecosystem.

Academician Ni Guangnan of the Chinese Academy of Engineering said at the conference that the open-source model helps RISC-V build an inclusive, collaborative, and innovative global ecosystem, becoming a new engine for the transformation of the chip industry.

As a chip instruction set architecture that is "born open-source," RISC-V has seen strong development over the past 15 years, moving from embedded systems to high-performance and complex scenarios, and providing new options for AI computing power. Among the 25 standards approved by the RISC-V International Foundation in 2024, more than half are related to high-performance or AI.

In this wave of RISC-V development, Xuantie from DAMO Academy is recognized as one of the Chinese institutions that has made the greatest contributions to the international open-source community. It currently holds positions as chair or vice-chair in the foundation's technical committee and more than ten technical groups, actively promoting the standardization of AI-related technologies. After the launch of the high-performance C910 processor, Xuantie actively open-sourced it, which became the starting point for global exploration of high-performance RISC-V applications. Currently, the Xuantie team has driven the implementation of over 30% of high-performance RISC-V processors, accelerating the penetration of RISC-V in various high-end fields. Academician Ni Guangnan noted that this pragmatic investment and innovation are important driving forces for the healthy development of the RISC-V ecosystem.

Focusing on high-performance and AI, the Xuantie processor family continues to innovate. At this conference, DAMO Academy announced that its highest-performance processor, C930, will begin delivery in March. The C930's general-purpose computing performance reaches 15/GHz in the SPECint2006 benchmark test, targeting server-level high-performance application scenarios. In addition, the C930 is equipped with a dual-engine of 512 bits RVV1.0 and 8 TOPS Matrix, natively integrating general-purpose high-performance computing with AI computing power, and it also opens a DSA extension interface to support more feature requirements. Meanwhile, the conference shared research and development plans for new members of the processor family, including C908X, R908A, and XL200, previewing continued evolution towards AI acceleration, automotive, and high-speed interconnectivity in the future.

To complement the capabilities of the Xuantie processors, DAMO Academy launched three Xuantie SDKs based on three mainstream operating systems (Linux, Android, and RTOS), aiming to empower the industry more comprehensively, conveniently, and stably. Among them, the Xuantie Linux SDK provides a rich set of subsystems, including Hypervisor virtualization, CoVE security framework, Xuantie AI framework, and high-performance operator libraries, to help kickstart the development of RISC-V in high-performance and AI scenarios.

It is worth noting that many of the benchmark achievements shared at the conference came from members of the "Wujian Alliance," which was initiated by DAMO Academy last year. The leading and open, inclusive effects are beginning to show.

To further expand the scope of cooperation and enhance technical capabilities, the "Wujian Alliance" officially announced a batch of new members at the conference. The addition of Cadence and Siemens EDA brings together the "EDA Big Three." Moreover, HIRAIN will provide chip definition, AUTOSAR basic software, and self-developed toolchain development based on RISC-V, building a complete automotive-grade solution from chips to software.

Under the joint efforts of global RISC-V practitioners, the technological and ecological potential of Xuantie is being unleashed further. Professor Luca Benini from ETH Zurich in Switzerland shared his insights and practices on "RISC-V + AI" with the conference via video link. Europe has been continuously increasing its investment in RISC-V in recent years, and Benini is leading a team to develop open-source AI hardware and software platforms based on processors such as Xuantie C910, enhancing AI computing efficiency. Benini said, "RISC-V is the open-source architecture needed for the AI era, leading us on an open path to an AI revolution!"