Europe launches ERICI to build the first open RISC-V industrial computer
European RISC-V Industrial Computing Initiative
The European RISC-V Industrial Computing Initiative (ERICI) coordinates an open reference stack—from firmware to real-time and general-purpose operating systems—verified to boot together on RVA23 hardware. RVA23 silicon with eight 64-bit cores and an IOMMU is shipping in 2026, but no industrial computer exists yet. ERICI breaks the chicken-and-egg loop with a partitioning hypervisor that runs real-time control alongside Linux on one SoC, and invites hardware makers, silicon vendors, and plant operators to join its non-commercial effort.
Board makers wait for software, software waits for boards, and customers wait for both. ERICI breaks that loop with an open reference stack running on real hardware.
- dragoncrab
This seems to be run by a random dude looking for funding:
About ERICI
ERICI is a non-commercial initiative in its founding phase. It is not yet a legal entity, sells nothing and charges no fees.
- ymz5
Author here. Happy to answer technical questions: about HFI BIOS, partitioning hypervisor (gRouvr), QSOE RTOS.
I hope that leading European industrial computer manufacturers notice the initiative and join -- or at least start evaluating the possibility to use RVA23 SoCs in their devices. Yes, currently only Chinese vendors can provide such chips, but the world is changing fast.
- strofocles
So one person creates a (fantasy ?) website and it gets on the 1st page of HN being mistaken for an European initiative?
- cbolton
This is just a webpage some individual put up, right? I mean as far as I can see there's no institute, no company, no government behind this. Just one RISC-V enthusiast on the contact page.
- hn_submit
Is this something more than a flag-waiving exercise? Who's actually manufacturing and selling these "European" CPUs?
I just purchased a boatload of Chinese RISC-V development boards for about $2.30 a piece. Can't wait to start playing with them.
"RISC(-V) architecture is going to change everything."
- ShadowOfThePit
> A machine expected to run for 15 years should not depend on one company's roadmap, or one government's decisions."
> A machine that runs for 15 years needs software that can be maintained for 15 years.
I don't quite understand. Has this been a problem for industrial machines? Can't they already run for 30 years and more?
What exactly is this initiative looking to fix and improve? Besides of the basic idea of FOSS being good, and whatever.
- clarionbell
And the chips will be manufactured in China. Truly a genius move.
- Havoc
Neat. This seems like exactly the sort of thing Europe should be pushing