Pedagogically Motivated and Composable Open-Source RISC-V Processors for Computer Science Education
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arXiv
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| Main Authors: | , , , |
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| Format: | Preprint |
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2025
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| _version_ | 1866918147468034048 |
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| author | McDougall, Ian Batchu, Harish Davies, Michael Sankaralingam, Karthikeyan |
| author_facet | McDougall, Ian Batchu, Harish Davies, Michael Sankaralingam, Karthikeyan |
| contents | While most instruction set architectures (ISAs) are only available to use through the purchase of a restrictive commercial license, the RISC-V ISA presents a free and open-source alternative. Due to this availability, many free and open-source implementations have been developed and can be accessed on platforms such as GitHub. If an open source, easy-to-use, and robust RISC-V implementation could be obtained, it could be easily adapted for pedagogical and amateur use. In this work we accomplish three goals in relation to this outlook. First, we propose a set of criteria for evaluating the components of a RISC-V implementation's ecosystem from a pedagogical perspective. Second, we analyze a number of existing open-source RISC-V implementations to determine how many of the criteria they fulfill. We then develop a comprehensive solution that meets all of these criterion and is released open-source for other instructors to use. The framework is developed in a composable way that it's different components can be disaggregated per individual course needs. Finally, we also report on a limited study of student feedback. |
| format | Preprint |
| id |
arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2509_20514 |
| institution | arXiv |
| publishDate | 2025 |
| record_format | arxiv |
| spellingShingle | Pedagogically Motivated and Composable Open-Source RISC-V Processors for Computer Science Education McDougall, Ian Batchu, Harish Davies, Michael Sankaralingam, Karthikeyan Hardware Architecture While most instruction set architectures (ISAs) are only available to use through the purchase of a restrictive commercial license, the RISC-V ISA presents a free and open-source alternative. Due to this availability, many free and open-source implementations have been developed and can be accessed on platforms such as GitHub. If an open source, easy-to-use, and robust RISC-V implementation could be obtained, it could be easily adapted for pedagogical and amateur use. In this work we accomplish three goals in relation to this outlook. First, we propose a set of criteria for evaluating the components of a RISC-V implementation's ecosystem from a pedagogical perspective. Second, we analyze a number of existing open-source RISC-V implementations to determine how many of the criteria they fulfill. We then develop a comprehensive solution that meets all of these criterion and is released open-source for other instructors to use. The framework is developed in a composable way that it's different components can be disaggregated per individual course needs. Finally, we also report on a limited study of student feedback. |
| title | Pedagogically Motivated and Composable Open-Source RISC-V Processors for Computer Science Education |
| topic | Hardware Architecture |
| url | https://arxiv.org/abs/2509.20514 |