European RISC-V Industrial Computing Initiative
ERICI establishes an open reference stack for RISC-V based industrial computing systems.
1The RVA23 Silicon Shift
The RVA23 profile, ratified in October 2024, mandates hypervisor and vector extensions for compliant chips. While initial 64-bit SoCs with IOMMU support became available in 2026, the industrial sector still lacks fully integrated computing boxes. ERICI aims to bridge this gap by coordinating a standardized reference stack across firmware and operating systems.
2Breaking the Adoption Loop
Board manufacturers currently wait for software, while software developers await hardware availability, creating a stagnation loop. ERICI disrupts this cycle by providing an open reference stack verified on actual RVA23 hardware. This initiative ensures that software interfaces are fixed between layers, allowing developers to build systems without waiting for proprietary vendor roadmaps.
3Independence from Single Vendors
Industrial machines often require a fifteen-year operational lifespan, making reliance on a single company or government roadmap risky. RISC-V offers an open instruction set governed by a non-profit, removing the licensing constraints associated with x86 or Arm. ERICI leverages this openness to ensure long-term maintainability for critical industrial control systems.
4Partitioned Software Architecture
The initiative utilizes a partitioning hypervisor to run real-time control tasks alongside standard Linux environments on a single SoC. This architecture isolates processes, ensuring that critical control functions remain unaffected by operator-level software. By defining clear interfaces between these layers, ERICI allows real-time and general-purpose systems to coexist reliably on hardware.
5Standardized Boot and Firmware
Firmware initializes the system, executes POST, and manages the UEFI boot loader to start the hypervisor or operating systems. The gRouvr hypervisor is loaded similarly to a Linux kernel, providing each partition with dedicated CPUs, memory, and devices. This structured approach ensures that the entire stack boots consistently on any RVA23-compliant hardware.
6Portability Across Silicon Vendors
The reference stack is designed to be SoC-agnostic, relying on the RVA23 profile rather than specific vendor implementations. Moving an application to a different RVA23 chip requires only porting the firmware and adapting drivers. This portability protects industrial investments, as the real-time application and Linux partitions remain functional across different hardware platforms.
7Open Source Maintenance Model
ERICI promotes long-term sustainability through an open-source stack, including HFI BIOS, mr-bml, and gRouvr components under GPL and Apache licenses. This transparency allows third parties to audit, build, and maintain the software independently of the original developers. Such openness is essential for machines expected to remain operational for over a decade.
8Founding Phase and Participation
Currently in its founding phase, ERICI invites companies and research institutions to join the initiative. Participants help shape the future of RISC-V in industrial computing by contributing to the reference stack. As the ecosystem grows, the initiative aims to establish a robust, vendor-neutral standard for the next generation of industrial edge platforms.