For 2025-10, delivered cross-repo improvements across riscv/sail-riscv and riscv/riscv-isa-manual, focusing on reliability, memory modeling accuracy, vector extension maintainability, and documentation navigation. Outcomes include safer code, stabilized build and packaging, expanded PMA support, unified vector path handling, integrated FP classification, and enhanced HTML docs navigation, enabling more accurate simulations and faster onboarding for contributors.

September 2025 (2025-09) – riscv/sail-riscv: Strengthened startup reliability, enhanced 64-bit config handling, and improved code quality across the repository. These changes increase system stability, reduce configuration errors, and streamline future maintenance.

August 2025 monthly summary for riscv/sail-riscv focusing on feature delivery and platform modernization. Key work delivered includes: (1) Enhanced ELF parsing and instruction tracing with symbols using ELFIO, enabling function names and offsets in traces; commits: f3be395f7214bb36864c0a4c36e09d771a20a959. (2) Build system modernization and packaging cleanup, removing deprecated Makefiles and aligning with CMake; commits: ce939b5576dc75711006cd3640c12903b3657228, 4f977c87ad724b3683f85952fd0dfbb50adb9fe6. (3) PTE permission checks refactor, simplifying logic by converting flags to booleans and separating privilege vs access checks; commits: 9a78dd25b19e6b8a24e05e206ad252a34712a686, ca12ea1e58a7a0079dcf6d52e62e7b7379ddb48b. (4) RISC-V simulator initialization simplification, removing generated reset vectors and directly initializing DTB and registers; commit: cf90da85c51f45098a86a143f98e39ff5dac9b34. (5) Vector register element handling improvement, refactoring vector control for simpler and more efficient element access; commit: 17a170f13c628f45eb36912e17ad0bc48fa5c56e. Major bugs fixed: none explicitly recorded in this month’s scope; the work focused on feature delivery and refactors to improve stability and maintainability. Overall impact and accomplishments: established a modernized build and packaging workflow, improved debuggability with symbols, clarified and safer memory/permission checks, streamlined simulator initialization and DTB handling, and optimized vector element processing, collectively contributing to a more robust, maintainable, and scalable RISCV sail-riscv foundation. The changes reduce onboarding friction for contributors and pave the way for faster iteration and more reliable measurements and tracing.

July 2025 monthly summary focusing on key accomplishments across two repositories (riscv/sail-riscv and riscv/riscv-cheri). Delivered high-impact features and robustness improvements, with a strong emphasis on business value, reliability, and maintainability.

June 2025 monthly summary: Delivered a targeted set of high-value features and reliability fixes across Sail-based RISCV projects, with a strong emphasis on tooling, ABI consistency, and code simplification to improve maintainability, build reliability, and performance of generated code. Highlights include significant code simplification in PMP control and Zbb execute clauses, Sail tooling/header integration, WRS instruction assembly, FP/ABI naming improvements, compressed register name map delegation, M-extension cleanup, and standardized Sail command strictness, complemented by essential bug fixes across vector immediates, encdec handling, and JSON I/O.

May 2025 monthly summary for riscv/sail-riscv focused on delivering business value through correctness, safety, and build reliability. Key improvements strengthen simulator trustworthiness and preparation for future feature work, enabling more predictable performance and smoother contributor onboarding.

April 2025 monthly summary focusing on key business value and technical achievements across riscv/sail-riscv and riscv/riscv-cheri. Delivered memory protection correctness in PMP handling, corrected CSR behavior to align with official ISA semantics, refactored Sail model for maintainability, improved CI/build workflow, and clarified CHERI page fault behavior. These changes improved test reliability, code readability, and developer productivity, while reducing build warnings and enabling smoother CI validation.

Summary for 2025-03: Key features delivered: - Sail-RISC-V model stability and correctness fixes (initialization for minstret[h]_write, improved memory/section handling, and fix for INT_MAX pmpaddr edge-case). - Sail-RISC-V testing enhancements (added first-party C tests, enabled tests via CMake, and added debugging visibility for cross-compilers during test runs). - Release build workflow improvement (install libstdc++-static to ensure C++ dependencies are available for release builds). Major bugs fixed: - Fix missing initialisation for minstret[h]_write. - Fix linker script for GNU ld. - Fix incorrect behaviour with INT_MAX pmpaddr. Overall impact: Reduced runtime risk and improved reliability of Sail-RISC-V, expanded test coverage and debuggability, and hardened release builds. Technologies demonstrated: CMake-based testing, GNU ld linker behavior, static linking of libstdc++, cross-compiler debugging, release workflow automation.

February 2025 monthly summary for riscv/sail-riscv: Delivered core emulator stability and feature enhancements focused on reliability, correctness, and release readiness. Key changes include reset behavior improvements, enhanced virtual memory with Sv57, consolidated mstatus handling, Sscofpmf groundwork, and a CI/static-build workflow. These changes reduce failure modes, broaden memory modeling capabilities, and streamline binary releases while laying groundwork for future extensions.

January 2025 monthly summary for RISCV development teams across riscv-cheri, sail-riscv, and sdtrigpend. The month focused on simplifying builds, improving documentation, and hardening spec-compliant behavior, while laying groundwork for future PMA support and cleaner maintenance workflows.

December 2024 performance wrap-up: Delivered critical features across three RISC-V repositories, improved emulator realism and build reliability, and tightened correctness and documentation. Key accomplishments include enabling supervisor-timer support, increasing emulator RAM to support Linux boot, modernizing the codebase with consolidated enums and static builds, clarifying PTE semantics in the CHERI work, and polishing naming conventions in documentation. These contributions collectively advance production readiness, cross-repo consistency, and developer productivity, while reducing risk in future maintenance and platform support.

November 2024: Focused on correctness, reliability, and codebase hygiene across riscv/sail-riscv and riscv/sdtrigpend. Delivered targeted fixes to MSTATUS legalization after N-extension removal, ensured correct SD and UPIE/UIE handling, and hardened delegated interrupt processing when the N extension is absent. Also completed a RISC-V HPM refactor to align with the Zihpm extension, and clarified Sscofpmf documentation. These changes reduce risk in production, improve interrupt correctness, and streamline future maintenance.

October 2024 (riscv/sail-riscv) delivered targeted modularization and cross-precision FP improvements that strengthen reliability, maintainability, and future-ready capabilities. Key outcomes include modularizing RISC-V error handling into riscv_errors.sail with a Makefile PRELUDE update, generalizing NaN boxing/unboxing across FP precisions to support upcoming Q-extension work, and resolving RV64F-related issues by simplifying FMV clauses and enforcing 64-bit FP length for double-precision operations. These changes reduce technical debt, improve code reuse, and enable safer experimentation with new features while preserving performance and correctness.