RVVM v0.6

This release includes

• Prebuilt rvvm-cli & librvvm v0.6 for Linux, Windows, MacOS x86_64
• More builds will be added later or should build from source
• Prebuilt riscv64 U-Boot 2024.1 fw_payload.bin EFI firmware; With NVMe & EFIFB support patches, has framebuffer console
• Prebuilt riscv64 Arch RISC-V image with networking, nano, sshd. Credentials are root:riscv. Built with archriscv-scriptlet, with mkinitcpio config for faster boot, no firmware
• Prebuilt riscv64 Debian image, see dqib. Notice they don't have framebuffer & I2C-HID enabled in the kernel. Credentials: root:riscv
• Prebuilt riscv64 OpenSBI 1.4 fw_jump.bin for use as an SBI bootrom with a custom kernel payload. Generic upstream OpenSBI works too.
• Prebuilt riscv64 static Linux 6.8.1 kernel Image linux_6.8 for tinkering
• See LekKit/patches-misc for firmware/kernel configs, patches and more

HOWTO

• To boot a generic distro/EFI image, use rvvm fw_payload.bin -m 2G -i archriscv.img. Be aware some images may be slow to boot, and usually need more than default 256M of RAM.

• Arch RISC-V image is included with full support. Debian lacks framebuffer/i2c-hid drivers in their kernel, but is otherwise functional over uart/ssh.

• Generic Ubuntu 23.10 image works, but is overall bloated: https://cdimage.ubuntu.com/releases/23.10/release/ubuntu-23.10-preinstalled-server-riscv64.img.xz. Press Enter over the UART (your terminal) at GRUB screen. Credentials: ubuntu:ubuntu. Xorg lags heavily because of a bug in an older version, disable HW accel in xorg config.

• FreeBSD 13.3 works: https://download.freebsd.org/snapshots/VM-IMAGES/13.3-STABLE/riscv64/Latest/FreeBSD-13.3-STABLE-riscv-riscv64.raw.xz. Credentials: root:root, use # kldload if_re to load networking driver.

• To boot a rootfs inside an image with a static kernel payload, use rvvm fw_jump.bin -k linux_6.8 -i rootfs.img. This is useful for distros without an official bootable image, like Buildroot, and is usually faster. If your image doesn't directly contain a root filesystem, you can pass -append root=/dev/nvme0n1p1 or the likes to the RVVM, and this cmdline will reach the guest kernel

New features

• Networking is now stable and enabled by default
• Allow port forwarding to the guest with -portfwd 127.0.0.1:8080=80
• Support relative mouse movement, grabbing the host mouse
• Support international keyboard layouts (I.e. keys specific to Japanese, Korean, German etc keyboards)
• Optional SDL2 GUI backend
• Support Big-endian hosts (MIPS64, PowerPC64) properly
• SiFive GPIO support
• MTD physmap firmware chip
• Dallas DS1742 Real-time clock
• Support (multiple) PTY or UNIX sockets as UART character device with -serial [file], silent UART with -serial null;
• Support explicitly choosing NVMe or ATA with -ata [img] or -nvme [img]
• Support using host block devices (/dev/sda, /dev/mmcblk) as RVVM drives
• Faster threaded IO implementation
• Faster UART console (Especially on Windows, Serenity)
• Optimized Win32 display rendering
• Slightly better RVJIT x86 register allocation
• RVJIT significantly optimizes memory accesses with userland CPU emulation (To the point of near-native perf of user emulation)
• Rework CMake build system to build shared librvvm properly
• Colorful logger
• Libretro port
• [WIP] Began work on a Linux userspace binary emulator. Many riscv64 glibc binaries work, but threading and JIT caches are flaky.

RVVM API Improvements:

• Character device API
• GPIO API
• Provide a separate mapping property for direct MMIO regions
• Omit PC increment for traps in Userland API
• Support non-canonical framebuffer stride
• Return rvvm_mmio_handle_t upon attaching most de-attachable MMIO devices
• Implement RVVM_OPT_MEM_BASE, RVVM_OPT_MEM_SIZE to query RAM configuration of the machine.
• Implement RVVM_OPT_HART_COUNT to query amount of cores
• Java JNI bindings

Fixes, compatibility

• Fix crashes when explicitly unloading librvvm shared library (#97)
• Fix NVMe deadlock reporting when host IO is slow (#99)
• More bullerproof RVJIT cache allocation (#98)
• Implement RT8169 93C56 EEPROM to fix FreeBSD & Haiku OS networking (#118)
• Fix rare keypress loss (#126)
• Fix pending PLIC interrupts not being re-delivered upon writes to prio/enable/threshold
• Fix 0-byte UDP payloads with tap_user backend
• Fix TCP connection tuple lookup
• Improve TCP stability immensely with tap_user backend
• Fix networking on NetBSD
• Implement proper FMA emulation without dual rounding in FPU, advertise FENV_ACCESS
• Fix endianness issues in FPU
• Fix several VMA operations on Win32 hosts
• Support both UTF8 and system locale paths on Win32 hosts
• Use pthread_cond_timedwait_relative_np() on MacOS to fix possible hang upon wall clock change
• Fix MMIO op size validation
• Fix PCI attach failure handling with all the devices
• Fix non-working I2C ocores with FreeBSD guest
• Advertise zicsr, zifencei extensions in CPU DT
• Fix KSM & THP erroneously not being enabled
• Use .dylib extension for MacOS shared lib target
• Fix OpenBSD CMake build due to type naming collisions
• Fix CMake build on arches without a JIT backend
• Fix Serenity build warnings due to macro naming collisions
• Myriad of small fixes

New Contributors

• @mishrasamiksha made their first contribution in #111
• @singodiyashubham87 made their first contribution in #116
• @fish4terrisa-MSDSM made their first contribution in #120
• @OscarL made their first contribution in #129

Full Changelog: v0.5...v0.6

RVVM v0.5

This release includes

• Prebuilt rvvm-cli v0.5 for Linux x86_64/ARM64, Windows x86_64, MacOS x86_64
• More builds will be added later or should build from source
• Prebuilt OpenSBI 1.2 fw_jump.bin for use in the guest
• Prebuilt U-Boot 2023.4 u-boot.bin kernel, fw_payload.bin firmware; With NVMe & EFIFB support patches
• See LekKit/patches-misc for firmware/kernel configs and more

Major features

• RVJIT Von Neumann instruction cache (ifence stalls elimination)
• RVJIT Linker (Direct linkage of translated functions, improves perf)
• NVMe storage devices, TRIM on raw sparse images
• OpenCores I2C, I2C-HID input devices, cursor integration
• Realtek RTL8169 NIC, WIP userspace networking (Build with USE_NET=1)
• ELF Firmware/Kernel loading

RVVM API Improvements:

• Automatic IRQ/Bus/MMIO assignment
• Machine options (CPU limits, etc)
• Framebuffer, HID, Reboot/poweroff APIs

Fixes, compatibility

• MMIO/PCIe Atomics
• ACLINT MSWI, working SMP in U-Boot
• PLIC fixes concerning FreeBSD/OpenBSD guests stability
• Support HaikuOS guests
• WFI fixes for full riscv-tests conformance
• Support UART VT on Windows 10
• Support HaikuOS, SerenityOS hosts
• Support Emscripten
• Support Windows CE
• Better thread/timer implementations on Windows
• Improve idle CPU usage and sleep precision
• Fix vulnerabilities & lockups exposed by LLVM Fuzzer
• Fix issues uncovered by ASAN/UBSAN/TSAN
• Fix MacOS IO issues (#81)
• Fix rare stuttering due to hashmap scaling logic
• Fix rare threadpool lockups
• Myriad of tiny fixes...

New Contributors

• @mjunix made their first contribution in #62
• @X547 made their first contribution in #64
• @kvxmmu made their first contribution in #72
• @iyzsong made their first contribution in #88

Full Changelog: v0.4...v0.5