Samsung announced at the Samsung Developer Conference 2024 the porting of the Tizen open mobile platform for devices with processors based on the RISC-V architecture. Samsung is exploring the use of RISC-V in smart TVs and other consumer devices and has partnered with Sifive to develop TV prototypes with RISC-V cores from the Sifive Performance series. One of these prototypes, built on the RISC-V processor Sifive Performance P470 and running Tizen firmware, was showcased at the exhibition.
Tizen is distributed under licenses such as GPLV2, Apache 2.0, and BSD, and is developed under the umbrella of the Linux Foundation, primarily by Samsung. The platform builds on the progress made by previous projects like Meego and Limo, and stands out for its support for Web API and Web technologies like HTML5, JavaScript, and CSS for creating mobile applications. The graphical environment is based on the Wayland Protocol and Enlightenment project developments, with Systemd for service management.
RISC-V offers an open and flexible system of machine instructions that enables the creation of microprocessors for various applications without constraints or usage conditions. This openness allows for the development of fully open SOCs and processors. Following the RISC-V specification, numerous companies and communities are developing dozens of microprocessor cores, over a hundred SOCs, and already manufactured chips under various free licenses like BSD, MIT, and Apache 2.0. Support for RISC-V is built into GLIBC 2.27, Binutils 2.30, GCC 7, and Linux 4.15.