Most commonly used instruction set architectures are proprietary, which prevents them from being used in science, research and education. These architectures are also not optimal, because of compatibility issues. RISC-V is on the other hand, modular open-source instruction set architecture, with compulsory use of one of four base instruction set variants and with optional extensions. As part of the diploma thesis, we specified FPGA configuration of RISC-V based processor in VHDL, explained design choices and tested developed specification on the FPGA board. Programs can be loaded to processor over UART, while content of the general purpose registers can be shown on the VGA display.
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