European RISC-V Industrial Computing Initiative

The European RISC-V Industrial Computing Initiative (ERICI) aims to turn newly available RVA23 chips into industrial computers. Its argument is that open RISC-V can reduce dependence on the x86 and Arm ecosystems, but industrial adoption needs more than capable processors: equipment must handle field I/O, harsh environments, long service lives and reliable real-time control. Existing RVA23 boards offer useful development platforms, yet published specifications do not establish many industrial requirements, such as wide-range 24-volt power, extended temperature tolerance, mounting options, certification or 10-15 years of availability. ERICI seeks to break the cycle in which hardware makers wait for software and software developers wait for hardware by coordinating an open stack tested on real RVA23 systems.

The proposed stack connects firmware and a menu-driven boot loader to gRouvr, a hypervisor that partitions processors, memory and devices, including through the IOMMU. It runs a real-time QSOE environment alongside general-purpose Linux, allowing machine control and operator applications to share one computer while remaining isolated. ERICI reports a demonstration of this arrangement on a SpacemiT K3 board; the example commercial boards it lists do not yet run the complete partitioned stack. Public interfaces and open-source components are intended to make systems auditable, portable across RVA23 chips and maintainable beyond the original developers. The non-commercial initiative charges no membership fees and invites hardware and silicon vendors, machine builders, operators, software providers and researchers to contribute concrete systems and components.