The RVFA exam demonstrates an individual possesses the fundamental, entry-level knowledge and skills required of RISC-V hardware and software professionals.
RISC-V Foundational Associate (RVFA)

The certification is ideal for those pursuing a career in roles such as Embedded Engineer, RTL Design Engineer, Design Verification Engineer, Software Developer (specifically Device Driver, Kernel, and Toolchain), or Documentation Engineer.

An RVFA candidate will have programming or design experience and may have completed computer science, software engineering, computer engineering, or electrical engineering coursework.

RVFA certificate holders have demonstrated the ability to write, debug, optimize, and compile code in RISC-V Assembly Language, as well as the ability to use toolchains (GCC, LLVM) and understand RISC-V calling conventions.

RISC-V International
RISC-V Documentation
Contribute to RISC-V

Understand Instruction Formats: branching, accessing memory, and accessing data structures
Understand the modularity of RISC-V as an ISA: core ratified (M, C, F, D, A) and other extensions
Understand Privilege Modes, system calls, CSRs, exceptions, and interrupt handling
Understand memory model, cache management, and virtual memory management

Write and debug RISC-V assembly code
Assess performance of assembly code
Convert high-level code to assembly code

Understand calling conventions (ABIs), the stack, and disassembly
Understand inline assembly

Understanding basic use and functionality of firmware for RISC-V platforms
Understanding microcontrollers versus application processors
Running RISC-V Applications in a General Purpose OS