New platform provides a common, binary-compatible foundation for MCU-class RISC-V designs in automotive, industrial, and IoT applications
Quintauris today announces the availability of EM-Altair, the standardized embedded platform for microcontroller-class RISC-V systems. EM-Altair defines the hardware, firmware, and runtime requirements needed for compliant implementations to behave consistently, giving embedded software the same “build once, deploy anywhere” assurance that has long been standard in other mature MCU ecosystems, without locking vendors into a specific microarchitecture.
RISC-V openness has driven rapid adoption in embedded and automotive designs, but that same openness has produced fragmentation: inconsistent interrupt and memory models, gaps in safety and security alignment, and toolchain and RTOS support that varies from vendor to vendor. EM-Altair addresses this directly by specifying a common execution environment, spanning ISA profile, privilege architecture, boot and runtime services, and security services, that can be implemented independently while remaining compatible with a shared software stack.
What EM-Altair defines
EM-Altair builds on the work of RISC-V International (RVI): it remains aligned with RVI’s ratified specifications and extends them with the platform-level requirements that embedded implementations need to interoperate in practice. At the ISA level, EM-Altair is built on an RV32IM baseline with a clearly bounded set of mandatory and optional extensions, giving developers a fixed target for interrupts, atomics, CSR behavior, and memory ordering rather than a moving one. The platform specifies a bounded, high-throughput interrupt architecture suited to hard real-time workloads, and PMP-based isolation across Machine and optional User modes for separating trusted and untrusted code, while remaining open and vendor-neutral.
The platform is designed to align with ASIL-B-equivalent safety practices and includes security hooks for firmware integrity and device protection, making it applicable to safety-relevant automotive subsystems (body electronics, zonal and infotainment controllers, EV energy management) as well as industrial control loops, IoT sensor nodes, and wearables.
EM-Altair is complemented by QNTAF, Quintauris’ validation and certification framework, which allows vendors to run benchmarking, conformance, and safety test suites across cloud, simulator, and FPGA targets, integrate testing into CI/CD pipelines, and generate the traceable artifacts needed to support certification.
“RISC-V has earned its place in embedded design. The next step is a shared foundation that lets silicon vendors differentiate on implementation while software teams build against one stable target. EM-Altair delivers that: the same binary, the same interrupt behavior, and the same safety assumptions across every compliant implementation, which is what automotive and industrial programs need to adopt RISC-V at scale.” Angel Berrio, Chief Product Officer, Quintauris.
Availability
The EM-Altair Platform specification is available to SoC vendors, RTOS developers, and OEMs, who can access the specification and QNTAF validation tooling at quintauris.com/em-altair-platform
About Quintauris
Quintauris is a global provider of RISC-V-based products. Founded in 2023, Quintauris develops profiles, reference architectures, and software components which enable compatibility and help establish RISC-V solutions to be widely used across various industries.
Founded by leading semiconductor players such as Bosch, Infineon, Nordic Semiconductor, NXP, Qualcomm, and STMicroelectronics, Quintauris’ mission is to accelerate the global adoption of RISC-V, the open standard Instruction Set Architecture (ISA), enabling the development of next-generation processors for automotive, industrial, and IoT applications.
Learn more at www.quintauris.com and connect with us on LinkedIn and YouTube.