Re: RVA22 or RVA23? Discussing RVA ISA Baselines in Debian

[Marco d'Itri <md@Linux.IT>]

On Jul 14, Yunseong Kim <ysk@kzalloc.com> wrote:

> Will Debian continue to target a broader baseline like RVA22 to retain
> compatibility with older hardware, even at the cost of some performance
> optimizations?
>
> Or is there an ongoing discussion about moving toward RVA23 as well, to align
> with upstream toolchains and OS ecosystems?
Not at this time, but there is no hurry since we are going to release 
Debian 13 this summer.

Maybe we can start this discussion next year, when hopefully it will be 
more clear how much RVA23-capable hardware will actually be available.

Most of the current RVA22 hardware is not much more than a proof of 
concept, so it will not be very interesting by the time Debian 14 will 
be released in 2027.
Even if we switch to RVA23 for Debian 14 the current RVA22 users would 
be able to use Debian 13 until about 2028, at which point the current 
RISC-V hardware will be useful only as paperweights.

--
ciao,
Marco

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