Linux Kernel ARM64 & RISC-V Support Analysis

Tracking the growth of supported boards (DTBs) over time
About the author

By Guodong Xu (docularxu) | Upstream RISC-V contributor | RISC-V International Advocate | Patches | About

Interested in which RISC-V ISA extensions are supported in Linux? See the RVA23 Linux v7.0 Coverage Analysis and RVA23 Extension Evolution.

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), 48 (v6.18), 56 (v7.0). 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 (2026-2030).

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 v7.0) plus the latest release candidate (v7.1-rc5). Kernel version history data referenced from Wikipedia.

Special thanks to Krzysztof Kozlowski for the original insights and methodology.