Johannes Kepler University Linz (JKU)

The Institute for Complex Systems (ICS) at JKU Linz focuses on mastering the ever-increasing complexity of modern hardware/software systems. Our work spans multiple abstraction levels—from Virtual Prototypes (VPs) in SystemC at the Electronic System Level (ESL), to RTL designs in Verilog/VHDL, down to gate-level representations. Across these levels, we tackle core challenges in Electronic Design Automation (EDA), with a strong emphasis on verification, debugging, and synthesis. A key pillar of this effort is our open-source virtual prototyping ecosystem around RISC-V. As a concrete outcome, we provide RISC-V VP++, a highly-configurable virtual prototype used for system-level evaluation, design exploration and novel verification approaches. Since 2025, RISC-V VP++ has CHERI support.