NetBSD on RISC-V - It Finally Runs NetBSD By: Dylan Eskew & Dr Phil Nelson

Dylan Eskew and Phil Nelson recount the progress, architecture, and challenges of porting the NetBSD operating system to the RISC-V platform.

The RISC-V port in NetBSD has been years in the making with the most recent efforts bringing success to the project. To enable the successful port, NetBSD needed to gain some supported technologies and undergo some structural changes to facilitate the requirements and recommendations accompanying the RISC-V platform. As the majority porting efforts targeted a virtual platform, physical hardware support has also been confirmed, though not without its own difficulties in addition to the software-side of the port. This document aims to recount the progress of the RISC-V port in NetBSD, lay down the foundational knowledge needed to understand the port structure in NetBSD, and articulate the considerations and difficulties that might be encountered in expanding the RISC-V hardware support in NetBSD.