{"ID":2866773,"CreatedAt":"2026-06-01T04:54:23.091178241Z","UpdatedAt":"2026-06-01T04:54:23.091178241Z","DeletedAt":null,"paper_url":"https://arxiv.org/abs/2509.20514","arxiv_id":"2509.20514","title":"Pedagogically Motivated and Composable Open-Source RISC-V Processors for Computer Science Education","abstract":"While most instruction set architectures (ISAs) are only available to use through the purchase of a restrictive commercial license, the RISC-V ISA presents a free and open-source alternative. Due to this availability, many free and open-source implementations have been developed and can be accessed on platforms such as GitHub. If an open source, easy-to-use, and robust RISC-V implementation could be obtained, it could be easily adapted for pedagogical and amateur use. In this work we accomplish three goals in relation to this outlook. First, we propose a set of criteria for evaluating the components of a RISC-V implementation's ecosystem from a pedagogical perspective. Second, we analyze a number of existing open-source RISC-V implementations to determine how many of the criteria they fulfill. We then develop a comprehensive solution that meets all of these criterion and is released open-source for other instructors to use. The framework is developed in a composable way that it's different components can be disaggregated per individual course needs. Finally, we also report on a limited study of student feedback.","short_abstract":"While most instruction set architectures (ISAs) are only available to use through the purchase of a restrictive commercial license, the RISC-V ISA presents a free and open-source alternative. Due to this availability, many free and open-source implementations have been developed and can be accessed on platforms such as...","url_abs":"https://arxiv.org/abs/2509.20514","url_pdf":"https://arxiv.org/pdf/2509.20514v1","authors":"[\"Ian McDougall\",\"Harish Batchu\",\"Michael Davies\",\"Karthikeyan Sankaralingam\"]","published":"2025-09-24T19:41:15Z","proceeding":"cs.AR","tasks":"[\"cs.AR\"]","methods":"[]","has_code":false}