basic_RV32s: An Open-Source Microarchitectural Roadmap for RISC-V RV32I
Abstract
This paper introduces BASIC_RV32s, an open-source framework providing a practical microarchitectural roadmap for the RISC-V RV32I architecture, addressing the gap between theoretical knowledge and hardware implementation. Following the classic Patterson and Hennessy methodology, the design evolves from a basic single-cycle core to a 5-stage pipelined core design with full hazard forwarding, dynamic branch prediction, and exception handling. For verification, the final core design is integrated into a System-on-Chip (SoC) with Universal Asynchronous Receiver-Transmitter (UART) communication implemented on a Xilinx Artix-7 Field-Programmable Gate Array (FPGA), achieving 1.09 Dhrystone million instructions per second per megahertz (DMIPS/MHz) at 50 MHz. By releasing all Register-Transfer Level (RTL) source code, signal-level logic block diagrams, and development logs under MIT license on GitHub, BASIC_RV32s offers a reproducible instructional pathway for the open-source hardware ecosystem.
Keywords
Cite
@article{arxiv.2510.15887,
title = {basic_RV32s: An Open-Source Microarchitectural Roadmap for RISC-V RV32I},
author = {Hyun Woo Kang and Ji Woong Choi},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2510.15887},
year = {2025}
}
Comments
2 pages, 3 figures. Accepted to ISOCC 2025 (submitted 14 Jul. 2025; accepted 8 Aug. 2025). To appear in the Proceedings of ISOCC 2025; oral presentation on 17 Oct. 2025 (conference opens 15 Oct 2025). Camera-ready version. Project repository: https://github.com/RISC-KC/basic_rv32s