On 27 February, FORTH hosted the World RISC-V Days in Heraklion, Greece, an in-person community event dedicated to advancing collaboration, knowledge exchange, and innovation within the global RISC-V ecosystem. The event ran from 10:00 to 15:00 (CET) and brought together students, researchers, educators, and industry representatives to explore the latest developments in open hardware and software systems.
As part of its active role in the European RISC-V ecosystem, FORTH also presented the HIGHER project, highlighting its ongoing research on secure, scalable, and open computing architectures for next-generation cloud and edge infrastructures.
What Are World RISC-V Days?
World RISC-V Days are a global series of community-driven events designed to promote the adoption and understanding of the RISC-V open instruction set architecture (ISA). Unlike traditional conferences, these events are highly interactive and locally organised, enabling direct engagement between researchers, developers, students, and industry practitioners. The Heraklion edition exemplified this mission by combining technical talks, project showcases, and hands-on sessions focused on real-world RISC-V systems.
The Importance of Open Days in Research Projects
Open days such as this play a critical role in European research and innovation projects like HIGHER. They provide a bridge between research outcomes and the wider community, ensuring that results are not only developed but also shared, validated, and discussed in open forums.
Key benefits of such events include:
- Knowledge transfer: enabling researchers to present technical results in an accessible format
- Community building: strengthening connections between European research groups and global ecosystems
- Early validation: gathering feedback from practitioners and potential users of the technology
- Skills development: supporting students and early-career engineers through exposure to cutting-edge systems
- Visibility and impact: increasing awareness of EU-funded research and its contribution to open hardware innovation
For HIGHER in particular, open events provide an important opportunity to demonstrate how research on secure RISC-V architectures can evolve into practical, deployable systems.
Building the Future of Open Hardware Together
The World RISC-V Days in Heraklion highlighted the strength of the European and global RISC-V communities and the importance of continued collaboration across research institutions, industry, and open-source contributors. By participating in and supporting such events, the HIGHER project contributes to a broader vision of open, transparent, and interoperable computing systems, aligned with European objectives for digital sovereignty and technological independence.
More information on the event can be found here: https://community.riscv.org/events/details/risc-v-international-risc-v-synergy-forums-technical-talks-and-webinars-presents-world-risc-v-days-heraklion-greece/