Experiences with NOMMU Linux for RISC-V platform bring-up and validation

The RISER project aims to build accelerator and microserver 
systems based on RISC-V SoCs from ongoing European projects funded by the EuroHPC JU. 
Working with experimental hardware platforms requires substantial effort on 
verification and bring-up, including bare-metal tests aimed at the core, memory, and 
platform levels. Booting a full-blown Linux distribution greatly expands test coverage but
also complexity. We recommend starting with a bare-minimum kernel configuration, without 
networking and storage functions, and even opting for a no-MMU system configuration, to 
progressively expand test coverage. In this talk, we outline the features and limitations of 
no-MMU and summarize our practical experience in early-stage verification of RISC-V prototype platforms.