Column: Silicon systems design


RISC-V verifi cation in an open ecosystem: Discipline beyond openness


By Mike Bartley, CEO, Alpinum T


he industrial adoption of RISC-V is often described as a milestone in architectural openness. An open instruction set architecture lowers


barriers to entry, supports sovereign silicon strategies and enables domain- specific acceleration. As part of this shift, verification methodologies are increasingly incorporating open-source tooling frameworks into structured design flows. Our recent work on RISC-V verification using open-source tools reinforces a central reality: Architectural openness does not reduce


verification complexity; in several respects, it increases it. Unlike long-established proprietary


ISAs with tightly managed evolution paths, RISC-V is deliberately modular. Optional extensions, implementation diversity and custom instruction capability expand the architectural


Figure 1: Modular structure of the RISC-V ISA (Source: ALLABOUTCIRCUITS)


configuration space. This flexibility is strategically powerful, but it also enlarges the verification surface area. As RISC-V moves from research platforms into safety, automotive and high-performance computing domains, the relevant question is no longer whether open architectures are viable. It is whether verification discipline supported by coherent tool integration can scale alongside architectural freedom.


Architectural modularity and state-space growth The RISC-V base ISA (RV32I/RV64I) can be extended through standardised modules for multiplication, atomic operations, floating point and vector processing. Each enabled extension introduces new interactions across privilege levels, exception-handling paths and pipeline hazard conditions. The result is not incremental complexity but combinatorial growth. Configuration diversity multiplies corner cases. Directed testing alone becomes insufficient. Constrained- random methodologies and coverage-


14 March 2026 www.electronicsworld.co.uk


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