ARM64 DTB Growth
Shows the number of Device Tree Blobs (DTBs) for ARM64 architecture in mainline Linux
LTS kernels.
Vendors are stacked to show contribution distribution. Note the explosive growth from
v4.1 (2015) to present.
RISC-V DTB Growth
Tracking RISC-V board support. Initial adoption starts around v5.4, accelerating
significantly in recent versions.
Future Projection: RISC-V vs ARM64 Trajectory
Comparison Analysis
- Alignment Point (~20-25 boards):
ARM64 (v4.4, Jan '16): 26 DTBs
RISC-V (v6.6, Oct '23): 21 DTBs
- Growth Slope (1 Year Later):
ARM64: Surged to 65 (v4.9), then expedited
growth (135 in v4.14).
RISC-V: Grew to 35 (v6.12). Steady growth,
but significantly flatter slope.
Analysis: By aligning the growth curves at a similar adoption point
(approx. 20-25 boards), we can project RISC-V's potential trajectory.
• ARM64 reached ~26 boards in v4.4 (Jan 2016).
• RISC-V reached ~21 boards in v6.6 (Oct 2023).
The chart shifts the ARM64 historical curve to align with this RISC-V milestone,
visualizing a potential growth path for RISC-V in the coming years (2025-2030).
Logarithmic Scale
Zoomed View (2022-2028)
Methodology & Acknowledgments
The analysis is based on the count of .dtb files generated by
make dtbs for each kernel version.
This serves as a proxy for the number of officially supported development boards and
platforms.
Data Collection Command:
make ARCH=arm64 defconfig
make ARCH=arm64 CROSS_COMPILE=aarch64-linux-gnu- dtbs
Inspiration: This analysis method was inspired by the presentation at
Open Source Summit
Japan 2025.
Kernel Versions: Focused primarily on LTS releases (v4.1 to v6.18) plus
the latest release candidates.
Kernel version history data referenced from Wikipedia.
Special thanks to Krzysztof Kozlowski for the original
insights and
methodology.