@OSbytes

Your First Open Source Contribution

Sep 15, 2025 · 5 min read · Open source contributions are a fantastic way to build skills, collaborate with global communities, and give back to projects you love. Whether you're a complete novice or have some coding experience, your first pull request (PR) can feel daunting—bu...

Roadmap: Contributing to Sail-to-CGEN (Sep–Nov 2025)

Jul 30, 2025 · 3 min read · September – Foundation Set Up Toolchains: Install and configure SAIL and CGEN toolchains on a development environment. Clone the Sail-RISC-V model from github.com/riscv/sail-riscv and CGEN from Synopsys’s ARC toolchain repo/GNU sources. Explore Sai...

Building a Custom ISA Extension ( IV )

Jul 30, 2025 · 4 min read · 💡 This is the 4th part of the SAIL-TO-CGEN blog series, consider reading the earlier blogs if you have difficulties understanding these. I’ll provide the link to those at the bottom. Imagine adding a custom matrix-multiply instruction to your CPU ...

The SAIL-to-CGEN Workflow ( III )

Jul 30, 2025 · 4 min read · How good would be crafting a new CPU instruction and having it seamlessly flow into your compiler, assembler, simulator, and even emulator like QEMU, all from one formal specification. That’s the vision of the SAIL-to-CGEN workflow, a pipeline that l...

A Deep Dive into GCC and CGEN ( II )

Jul 30, 2025 · 6 min read · Building a compiler that works across dozens of CPU architectures is no small feat. Enter GCC and CGEN, two pillars that make this possible. In this deep dive, we’ll unpack how GCC compiles C/C++ for diverse CPUs, how it traditionally uses machine-de...