Industrial computing runs on two instruction sets — x86 (Intel/AMD) and Arm (Arm Holdings) — each controlled by a single licensor. ERICI, the European RISC-V Industrial Computing Initiative, aims to break that duopoly by defining and verifying a complete open reference stack, from firmware through hypervisor to real-time and general-purpose operating systems, all running on RVA23-compliant RISC-V silicon. The initiative is non-commercial, European-based, and open worldwide. The technical foundation is the RVA23 profile, ratified in October 2024, which makes hypervisor and vector extensions mandatory on every compliant chip. First RVA23 SoCs — currently from Chinese vendors like SpacemiT — shipped in 2026 with eight 64-bit cores and an IOMMU. ERICI's reference stack layers HFI BIOS (U-Boot-based firmware), the mr-bml boot loader, the gRouvr partitioning hypervisor, a QNX-style real-time OS called QSOE, and Linux for operator-facing tasks. A YouTube demonstration already shows gRouvr booting Linux and QSOE side by side on a SpacemiT K3 board. The initiative addresses a specific coordination failure. Board makers won't build RISC-V industrial hardware without a software stack. Software developers won't port without boards. Customers won't commit without both. ERICI breaks this deadlock by fixing the interfaces between layers — UEFI, kernel-plus-initrd, devicetree — and verifying they boot together on real hardware. Any box that passes is "ERICI-compatible." Existing RVA23 hardware like the Firefly AIBOX-K3 and Milk-V Jupiter2 already deliver capable development platforms but fall short of industrial requirements. Neither offers the full checklist: 24V DC wide-input power, −40 to 85°C operating range, fieldbus I/O (EtherCAT, CAN, TSN), DIN-rail mounting, hardware watchdog, EMC certification, or 10-15 year availability commitments. ERICI's role is to define what "industrial" means for this architecture and pull the ecosystem toward it. The licensing structure is deliberately sovereignty-friendly. HFI BIOS is GPL-2.0, mr-bml is GPL-3.0, gRouvr and QSOE are Apache 2.0. Closed-source components are permitted so long as they respect the published interfaces. The explicit pitch: a machine expected to run for 15 years should not depend on one company's roadmap or one government's export controls. The first RVA23 SoCs are Chinese, but the stack is designed to port to any compliant chip — European, American, or otherwise. ERICI invites five categories of participants: industrial hardware makers (to build the actual enclosures), silicon vendors (for long-term SoC availability), machine builders and plant operators (for real-world requirements), OS and driver vendors, and universities. It charges no fees and sells nothing. The theory of change is that a verified, open reference stack lowers the activation energy for every participant simultaneously. The strategic logic is sound but the execution risk is enormous. Open-source industrial stacks have a long history of losing to proprietary incumbents who bundle support, certification, and liability. ERICI's first RVA23 silicon comes entirely from Chinese vendors, which creates exactly the single-country dependency the initiative claims to solve. The real test is whether European or other non-Chinese silicon vendors deliver RVA23 chips before industrial customers lose patience — and whether anyone besides the founding developers actually ships a certified box.
