Ibex is a production-quality open source 32-bit RISC-V CPU core written in SystemVerilog. The CPU core is heavily parametrizable and well suited for embedded control applications. Ibex is being extensively verified and has seen multiple tape-outs. Ibex supports the Integer (I) or Embedded (E), Integer Multiplication and Division (M), Compressed (C), and B (Bit Manipulation) extensions.
The block diagram below shows the small parametrization with a 2-stage pipeline.
Ibex was initially developed as part of the PULP platform under the name “Zero-riscy”, and has been contributed to lowRISC who maintains it and develops it further. It is under active development.
Ibex offers several configuration parameters to meet the needs of various application scenarios. The options include different choices for the architecture of the multiplier unit, as well as a range of performance and security features. The table below indicates performance, area and verification status for a few selected configurations. These are configurations on which lowRISC is focusing for performance evaluation and design verification (see supported configs).
Config | “micro” | “small” | “maxperf” | “maxperf-pmp-bmfull” |
---|---|---|---|---|
Features | RV32EC | RV32IMC, 3 cycle mult | RV32IMC, 1 cycle mult, Branch target ALU, Writeback stage | RV32IMCB, 1 cycle mult, Branch target ALU, Writeback stage, 16 PMP regions |
Performance (CoreMark/MHz) | 0.904 | 2.47 | 3.13 | 3.13 |
Area - Yosys (kGE) | 16.85 | 26.60 | 32.48 | 66.02 |
Area - Commercial (estimated kGE) | ~15 | ~24 | ~30 | ~61 |
Verification status | Red | Green | Amber | Amber |
Notes:
The Ibex user manual can be read online at ReadTheDocs. It is also contained in the doc
folder of this repository.
The Ibex repository includes Simple System. This is an intentionally simple integration of Ibex with a basic system that targets simulation. It is intended to provide an easy way to get bare metal binaries running on Ibex in simulation.
A more complete example can be found in the Ibex Super System repository. In particular it includes a integration of the PULP RISC-V debug module. It targets the Arty A7 FPGA board from Digilent and supports debugging via OpenOCD and GDB over USB (no external JTAG probe required). The Ibex Super System is written by lowRISC but is not an official part of Ibex, nor officially supported by lowRISC.
We highly appreciate community contributions. To ease our work of reviewing your contributions, please:
When contributing SystemVerilog source code, please try to be consistent and adhere to our Verilog coding style guide.
When contributing C or C++ source code, please try to adhere to the OpenTitan C++ coding style guide. All C and C++ code should be formatted with clang-format before committing. Either run clang-format -i filename.cc
or git clang-format
on added files.
To get started, please check out the “Good First Issue” list.
If you find any problems or issues with Ibex or the documentation, please check out the issue tracker and create a new issue if your problem is not yet tracked.
Do not hesitate to contact us, e.g., on our public Ibex channel on Zulip!
Unless otherwise noted, everything in this repository is covered by the Apache License, Version 2.0 (see LICENSE for full text).
Many people have contributed to Ibex through the years. Please have a look at the credits file and the commit history for more information.