Guodong Xu

About Me

I'm Guodong Xu (徐国栋), also known online as docular / docularxu. I've spent 20+ years working on Linux kernel development, from early driver bring-up at Motorola, through a decade leading Arm platform work at Linaro, and upstream RISC-V work at RISCstar, to the Qualcomm China Linux Team today. My focus has been on the parts most people never see: BSP development, power management, and performance tuning. I still remember telling my family I worked at Motorola—their first question: "So you sell phones?"

Since June 2026 I've been with Qualcomm's China Linux Team. Before that, at RISCstar, I led software engineering while contributing patches to mainline Linux and the open-source community around it. I'm a RISC-V International Advocate, and I give talks at RISC-V Summit, Linux Plumbers Conference, openEuler, and similar events when I have something worth sharing.

In the Linux kernel, I am the maintainer of the SpacemiT reset driver (drivers/reset/spacemit/, covering the K1 and K3 SoCs).

Recent Works - Linux Kernel Upstreaming

What I am actively working on upstream right now. Earlier series are listed under Earlier Work: Linux Kernel Upstreaming.

RVA23 Profile: runtime detection and userspace export

• riscv: hwprobe: Expose RVA23U64 base behavior, v8 (11 patches; 20 Sep 2026, under review) — carried forward from Andrew Jones' RFC; introduces an ISA-bases bitmap, prints isa bases in /proc/cpuinfo, and exposes the rva23u64 base behavior via hwprobe so distributions can target RVA23 with glibc-hwcaps.

Companion to this series: the compile-time specialisation work (building the kernel for RVA23) by Charlie Jenkins, which I measured on SpacemiT K3 silicon for the RISC-V Summit Europe 2026 talk.

In the Spotlight

Featured talks, blog posts, and press coverage. Newest first, with the release calendar pinned on top.

📅

📌 Pinned · Reference Tool

Maintained through 2026

Linux Kernel Release Calendar 2026 / 2027

One horizontal timeline of every 2026 merge window, release candidate, and stable release, with a "today" marker and the Ubuntu 26.04 kernel freeze overlaid. Made to keep myself on track; it is now my most visited page and gets passed around engineering teams.

🐧 Kernel 2026

🔧 U-Boot 2026

📝 Blog · Linux Plumbers Conference 2026

October 11, 2026

Back from LPC26: One RVA23U64 Bit, Four Asks, and a Penguin Hat

Why the kernel should answer "is this machine RVA23?" with one bit, how the rva23u64 hwprobe series got to v8 and the five related efforts it moved along the way, the four asks I brought to the RISC-V Microconference in Prague, and what came back: eight patches queued for the next merge window, glibc-hwcaps profile builds, and a consensus to deprecate disabling V.

📝 Read the post

📡 RSS

Linux Plumbers Conference 2026, Prague

October 6, 2026

RVA23 in practice: discovery, dispatch, and the hardware left behind

RISC-V Microconference talk on the three unresolved kernel questions between "the profile exists" and "userspace can rely on it": extension discovery (hwprobe vs. prctl), a dispatch story distributions can adopt, and pre-RVA23 hardware.

📊 Slides

RISC-V International Blog

September 28, 2026

Community Motion: What Are RISC-V Advocates Doing?

RISC-V International featured my work as an Advocate under "Guodong Xu: From RVA23 to Real-World Adoption": the Summit Europe talk, the RVA23 readiness blog, the RISE Platform Working Group, and the LPC 2026 RISC-V Microconference paper.

🏅 Featured as RISC-V International Advocate

RISCstar Solutions Blog

August 12, 2026

RVA23: From Ratification to Real-World Readiness

RVA23 was ratified in October 2024, and the SpacemiT K3 is now on shelves with more RVA23 silicon close behind. What was the industry up to in between, and is the software stack ready for the chips that have arrived?

🔧 RVA23 • Silicon • Distributions

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RISC-V Summit Europe 2026, Bologna

June 9, 2026

RVA23 Profile Support in Linux Kernel: From Extension Definitions to Userspace Export

Main Hall talk co-presented with Charlie Jenkins (Meta), in the plenary slot right after Greg KH's keynote (one of 26 oral talks accepted from 291 submissions). How the kernel's RVA23 mandatory coverage went from ~68% to 100% in Linux v7.0, how maintainers decide what "supporting" an extension means, and the runtime-detection and compile-time-specialisation series for v7.1. Selected by the RISE Project as a Featured RISE Member Talk.

📊 Slides

🎥 Video

▶

RISC-V International China Community Meetup

April 10, 2026

Empowering RISC-V Ecosystem with AI Agents: RVA23 Specs and Practical RISC-V Skills

Online talk co-presented with Jian Zhang on RVA23 readiness and AI-assisted workflows for daily RISC-V development.

📊 Slides

🎥 Video

This Week in RISC-V

March 20, 2026

RISC-V International Featured: Linux v7.0-rc1 Reaches Full RVA23 Mandatory Extension Coverage

My RISCstar blog post on RVA23 upstream work was cited by RISC-V International in the 🧠 This Week in RISC-V: March 20, 2026 issue.

📢 RISC-V International Weekly Newsletter

📝 Article · LinkedIn

January 24, 2026

RISC-V vs ARM64: A 7.5-Year Time-Shifted Alignment

Counting the boards each mainline LTS kernel supports, by the device tree blobs it builds: ARM64 since v4.1 and RISC-V since v5.4. ARM64 passed 26 boards in 2016 and went exponential; RISC-V reached 21 in v6.6 (October 2023) and has grown linearly since. Shift the ARM64 curve by 7.5 years and the two lines up, which raises the question whether RISC-V follows the same script or writes its own.

📝 Read on LinkedIn

📊 Explore the data

RISC-V International Blog

July 24, 2025

RISC-V Summit China 2025: Reflections from a RISC-V Software Contributor

Insights and observations from attending the 5th RISC-V Summit China, sharing perspectives on ecosystem development and community growth.

📢 Republished by CRVA (China RISC-V Alliance)

RISCstar Solutions Blog

April 14, 2025

RISC-V Linux Kernel Upstreaming: Insights from the 2025 China RISC-V Ecosystem Conference

Key insights on the current state of RISC-V Linux kernel upstreaming and challenges faced by the community.

🔧 Linux Kernel • RISC-V

RISC-V Ecosystem Intelligence

Interactive dashboards and analysis tools tracking the evolution of RISC-V support in the Linux Kernel.

Earlier Work: Linux Kernel Upstreaming (2024–2026)

Public upstream work from my time at RISCstar. (Client work stays with clients.)

RVA23 Contributions

• RVA23U64/RVA23S64 mandatory extensions support, patch 6-9 (13 Jan 2026, applied to riscv-dt-for-next)
• riscv: dts: Add "b" ISA extension to existing devicetrees (20 Jan 2026, accepted)
• riscv: cpufeature: Add Supm extension id and validation (25 Jan 2026, applied Apr 2026)

Fixes found during RVA23 work:

• riscv/cpufeature.c: Zk missing Zknh (6 Jan 2026, applied)
• dt-bindings: riscv: update ratified version of h, svinval, svnapot, svpbmt (10 Jan 2026, applied)

SpacemiT K3 & K1 SoC Support

• K3: Basic device tree enablement (15 Jan 2026, applied)
• K3: Reset driver v3 (20 Jan 2026, under review)
• K1: PDMA — working DMA driver (22 Aug 2025, merged into v6.18)
• K1: PWM support (7 Jul 2025, merged into v6.17)

StarFive JH7110 SoC Support

• Add DeepComputing FML13V01 board dts (28 Oct 2024, merged into v6.12)

Earlier Work: RVV Performance Benchmarks (2025)

Benchmark analyses and performance reports for RISC-V Vector Extension (RVV).

SLEEF (Nonlinear Math)

• SLEEF RVV Benchmark Summary (16 Oct 2025)
• GELU Kernel Benchmarks: erf/tanh on RVV (17 Oct 2025)

OpenBLAS (Linear Algebra)

• RISC-V GEMV Performance Summary (16 Oct 2025)
• OpenBLAS RVV Benchmark Summary (16 Oct 2025)

RISC-V Summit NA 2025

October 23, 2025

Moving to RISC-V Vector: A Practical Journey of AI Operator Optimization

Conference talk on practical AI operator optimization using RISC-V Vector Extension, presented at RISC-V Summit North America.

🎥 YouTube

📄 PDF

📊 PPTX

Earlier Work: Arm SVE Libraries

I have extensive experience accelerating computing libraries using vector instructions (including Arm SVE/SME and RISC-V Vector Extension). The contributions listed here represent only my open source work; significant additional contributions to commercial software libraries are not shown.

BLIS (BLAS-like Library Instantiation Software)

Added two kernels (dgemm and dpackm) using ARM SVE.

• BLIS 0.8.0 Release Notes - ARM SVE kernels contribution (19 Nov 2020)

ISA-L (Intel Intelligent Storage Acceleration Library)

Enabled SVE (Scalable Vector Extension) support in ISA-L erasure code for aarch64 architecture.

• Enable SVE in ISA-L erasure code for aarch64 (28 Dec 2021)

Education & Experience

Current

Engineer, Principal — China Linux Team, Qualcomm — 2026.06 – Present

• Linux kernel and platform software engineering with Qualcomm's China Linux Team.
• RISC‑V International Advocate; member of the RISE Platform and Enablement & Optimization Working Groups. Continuing to contribute to the upstream Linux kernel and the RISC‑V ecosystem.

Previously

Education

• M.S., Computer Science — Beijing University of Posts and Telecommunications (1999–2002)
• B.S., Computer Science — Qingdao University (1995–1999)

Selected Skills

Contact

Beijing, China
docularxu@msn.com · (+86) 138‑1154‑8651
LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/docularxu

Badges & Certifications

RISC-V International Advocate

Ambassadors & Advocates Program

RISC-V International

2026

Quantization Fundamentals

Hugging Face

DeepLearning.AI

June 11, 2024

Conference Speaking Engagements

English

• 6 Oct 2026, Linux Plumbers Conference 2026, Prague, RISC-V Microconference Talk: "RVA23 in practice: discovery, dispatch, and the hardware left behind" [Slides]
• 9 Jun 2026, RISC-V Summit Europe 2026, Bologna, Main Hall Talk (with Charlie Jenkins): "RVA23 Profile Support in Linux Kernel: From Extension Definitions to Userspace Export" — Featured RISE Member Talk [Slides] [Video]
• 10 Apr 2026, RISC-V International China Community Online Meetup, Online Talk (with Jian Zhang): "Empowering RISC-V Ecosystem with AI Agents: RVA23 Specs and Practical RISC-V Skills" [Slides] [Video]
• 25 Nov 2025, RISC-V Industry Development Conference and RDSA International Summit, Zhuhai/Macao, Talk: "Porting Code to RISC-V: Course Development practices accelerating the RISC-V developer ecosystem"
• 23 Oct 2025, RISC-V Summit 2025 NA, Talk: "Moving to RISC-V Vector: A Practical Journey of AI Operator Optimization"
• 16 Jul 2025, The 5th RISC-V Summit China, Shanghai, Poster: "RISC-V Linux Kernel / Boot Firmware 2025 Progress Report: Challenges from Upstream and Downstream"
• 22 Mar 2025, openEuler on RISC-V & deepin Meetup-Beijing, Lightning Talk: "Understanding RISC-V Ecosystem Development Stages and Construction Path from the Perspective of Arm Ecosystem Development"
• 28 Feb 2025, 2025 China RISC-V Ecosystem Conference, Talk: "Current Status of RISC-V Linux Kernel Open Source Upstream"
• 28 Dec 2024, RISC-V Industry Development Conference 2024, Talk: "Crossing the Chasm: Ecosystem Transition and Challenges from Arm to RISC-V"
• 18 Dec 2024, Shanghai Zhangjiang, CIX Technology 2024 Ecosystem Conference, Panel Discussion with ecosystem leaders from Red Hat, Ubuntu, Deepin, Kylin, and openEuler: "Embracing Community, Open and Win-Win"
• 5 Jul 2024, openEuler Big Data Meetup, Talk: "Advantages and Challenges of Using UADK Acceleration in Big Data"
• 10 Apr 2024, FOSSASIA Summit 2024, Ha Noi, Talk: "Optimizing Workloads with Arm64 & Hardware Accelerators"
  Topics: HBase/HDFS Transparent Encryption, AES/SM4, OpenSSL 3.0
• 19 Aug 2023, ApacheCon 2023, Talk: "Optimizing HDFS Performance: Balanced Utilization of Hardware Accelerators and ARM64 Multi-core Capabilities on KUNPENG920"
  Topics: HDFS, Big Data, MD5, Multi-buffer, UADK Acceleration, OPENSSL
• 16 May 2022, openEuler + Linaro Developer Day, Talk: "Accelerating High-Performance Computing with Arm SVE Vector Instructions"

中文

• 6 Oct 2026，Linux Plumbers Conference 2026，布拉格，RISC-V Microconference 演讲 "RVA23 in practice: discovery, dispatch, and the hardware left behind" [Slides]
• 9 Jun 2026，RISC-V Summit Europe 2026，博洛尼亚，主会场，与 Charlie Jenkins 联合演讲 "RVA23 Profile Support in Linux Kernel: From Extension Definitions to Userspace Export"（RISE 基金会 Featured RISE Member Talk） [Slides] [Video]
• 10 Apr 2026，RISC-V International 中国社区线上 Meetup，与张建联合线上分享《用 AI Agent 赋能 RISC-V 生态：RVA23 规范与 RISC-V 实用技能》 [Slides] [Video]
• 25 Nov 2025，RISC-V产业发展大会暨RDSA国际论坛，人才分论坛，珠海/澳门，演讲《〈Porting Code to RISC-V〉：加速 RISC-V 开发者生态的课程实践》
• 23 Oct 2025，RISC-V Summit 2025 NA，"Moving to RISC-V Vector: A Practical Journey of AI Operator Optimization - Guodong Xu, RISCstar Solutions"
• 16 Jul 2025，第五届RISC-V中国峰会，The 5th RISC-V Summit China, 上海。Posters，《RISC-V Linux 内核/启动固件2025进展报告 - 从上游支持到生产级部署的实践与挑战》
• 22 Mar 2025，openEuler on RISC-V & deepin Meetup-北京站，闪电演讲《从 Arm 生态的发展看 RISC-V 生态的发展阶段和构建之路》
• 28 Feb 2025，2025 中国 RISC-V 生态大会，演讲《RISC-V Linux内核开源upstream现状》
• 28 Dec 2024，RISC-V 产业发展大会 2024，演讲《跨越鸿沟：从Arm到RISC-V的生态转型与挑战》
• 18 Dec 2024，上海张江，此芯科技2024生态大会，圆桌论坛：与来自 红帽 / Ubuntu / 统信 Deepin / 麒麟 openEuler 的生态负责人共话《拥抱社区，开放共赢》
• 5 Jul 2024，openEuler 大数据 Meetup，演讲《大数据领域使用 UADK 加速的优势和挑战》
• 10 Apr 2024，FOSSASIA Summit 2024，Ha Noi，演讲《Optimizing Workloads with Arm64 & Hardware Accelerators》
  主要内容：HBase/HDFS Transparent Encryption，AES/SM4，OpenSSL 3.0
• 19 Aug 2023，ApacheCon 2023，《优化HDFS性能:在KUNPENG920上实现硬件加速器和ARM64多核能力的均衡利用》
  主要内容：HDFS，大数据，MD5，Multi-buffer，UADK 加速，OPENSSL
• 16 May 2022，openEuler + Linaro Developer Day，演讲《利用 Arm SVE 向量指令加速高性能计算》

Other Videos & References

Additional talks, interviews, and resources.

2026 Release Calendars

A hobby for fun — I made these to keep myself on track, hopefully useful to others too.