Hi All,



The RISC-V H-extension v0.6.1 draft was released almost a year back in

May 2020. There has been no changes in the H-extension specification

since then.



Meanwhile, we have RISC-V H-extension v0.6.1 implemented in QEMU,

Spike, and Rocket FPGA. We also have three different hypervisors ported

to RISC-V H-extension v0.6.1:

1. Xvisor RISC-V (Works on QEMU, Spike, and Rocket FPGA)

2. KVM RISC-V (Works on QEMU, Spike and Rocket FPGA)

3. Bao (Works on Rocket FPGA)



Unfortunately, RISC-V H-extension not being in freeze state is now gating

further software development because major open source projects (such

as Linux RISC-V and GCC RISC-V) have adopted a policy of accepting patches

only for frozen or ratified RISC-V extensions.



Few examples of gated software development:

1. KVM RISC-V not merged in upstream Linux RISC-V. The KVM RISC-V

    patches are already reviewed and acked by maintainers in July 2019.

    Currently, we are rebasing KVM RISC-V patches with every kernel

    release since 1.5+ years.

2. GCC RISC-V not accepting patches for H-extension related instructions

3. KVMTOOL RISC-V not merged because KVM RISC-V is not merged in

    upstream Linux RISC-V

4. QEMU KVM RISC-V acceleration not merged because KVM RISC-V is

    not merged in upstream Linux RISC-V

5. Various feature additions (such as SBI v0.2, nested, etc) can't happen

   (or can't be merged) until KVM RISC-V is merged in Linux RISC-V

6. Libvirt library blocked on QEMU KVM RISC-V acceleration being

    available. The Libvirt library is a crucial piece in open-source cloud

    solutions (such as open-stack).

7. As time passes more items (such as KVM RISC-V AIA support) will

    get blocked if KVM RISC-V is not merged upstream.



We would request the TSC to consider freezing RISC-V H-extension v0.6.1

draft specification. Remaining items in done checklist for ratification can

certainly be completed while H-extension is in the frozen state.



Best Regards,

Anup Patel