From: Tim Newsome [email protected]

Sent: Monday, July 27, 2020 12:09PM

To: Tech-Config [email protected]

Subject: Re: [RISC-V] [tech-config] updated charter

  On 7/27/2020 12:09 PM, Tim Newsome wrote:

The proposal is in the pull request on github. 

https://github.com/riscv/configuration-structure/pull/5

(You can see the actual text by clicking the "Files changed" link.)

If anybody disagrees with that language, please comment on github or start an e-mail discussion with your proposed change and reasoning. Until you see your new text appear in that pull request, it will not be voted on at the next meeting, so speak up repeatedly if you have to. All I've seen so far is people here and there mentioning that maybe something would be nice or is also relevant. If I missed something, please repeat it.

Tim

Task Group Charter

The Configuration Structure Task Group will:

• Specify syntax and semantics for a static data structure that can accommodate all implementation parameters of RISC-V standards: the configuration structure. There will be two configuration structure formats: a machine-readable format intended to be embedded in hardware, and a human-readable format intended for people to work with directly.
• Specify how M-mode software can discover and access any present machine-readable configuration structures.
• Provide a tool that can translate between the machine-readable and human-readable formats.

Implementation parameters are details that a RISC-V specification explicitly leaves up to an implementation. This includes hart-specific details like the kinds of hardware triggers supported, as well as details that are outside harts such as the supported abstract debug commands.

The configuration structure should:

• be flexible enough that future task groups won’t feel the need to create another structure used to describe implementation parameters.
• be easy to translate into other data structures.

The configuration structure is intended to be used:

• to describe RISC-V hardware profiles
• by firmware and BIOSes during the boot process
• by debuggers
• by a tool chain to build software tailored to a configuration profile