Latest version requires way more redundant configuration

[nazar-pc]

I was trying to upgrade to the latest revision of act4 branch from https://github.com/riscv/riscv-arch-test/tree/cert-docs-2026-04-01-17-37-00ca3c9 and noticed that for some reason it requires a lot more redundant configuration.

For example, it requires HPM_COUNTER_EN despite core not claiming Zicntr or Zihpm support, it also requires MCOUNTENABLE_EN and NUM_PMP_ENTRIES. Once I added those, turned out a whole bunch of other things were needed too:

  - /base: Required property 'reserved_behavior' not found.
  - /base: Required property 'writable_fiom' not found.
  - /base: Required property 'writable_hpm_counters' not found.
  - /base: Required property 'xtval_nonzero' not found.
  - /extensions: Required property 'A' not found.
  - /extensions: Required property 'D' not found.
  - /extensions: Required property 'F' not found.
  - /extensions: Required property 'S' not found.
  - /extensions: Required property 'Smcntrpmf' not found.
  - /extensions: Required property 'Sscofpmf' not found.
  - /extensions: Required property 'Ssqosid' not found.
  - /extensions: Required property 'Sstc' not found.
  - /extensions: Required property 'Sstvala' not found.
  - /extensions: Required property 'Stateen' not found.
  - /extensions: Required property 'Sv32' not found.
  - /extensions: Required property 'Sv39' not found.
  - /extensions: Required property 'Sv48' not found.
  - /extensions: Required property 'Sv57' not found.

Why do I have to specify all those if I do not implement any of it anyway? My understanding was that previously any extension that was not specified as supported was implicitly assumed to not be supported and didn't require an explicit entry. But now the configuration for simpler cores blows up in size with a large amount of redundancy.

Is this intentional or may be simplified?

[jordancarlin]

I was trying to upgrade to the latest revision of act4 branch from https://github.com/riscv/riscv-arch-test/tree/cert-docs-2026-04-01-17-37-00ca3c9 and noticed that for some reason it requires a lot more redundant configuration.

For example, it requires HPM_COUNTER_EN despite core not claiming Zicntr or Zihpm support, it also requires MCOUNTENABLE_EN and NUM_PMP_ENTRIES. Once I added those, turned out a whole bunch of other things were needed too:

HPM_COUNTER_EN, MCOUNTENABLE_EN, and NUM_PMP_ENTRIES are defined by the Sm extension, which UDB currently requires all config files to include. You can get the *_EN fields to all false and NUM_PMP_ENTRIES to 0.

  - /base: Required property 'reserved_behavior' not found.
  - /base: Required property 'writable_fiom' not found.
  - /base: Required property 'writable_hpm_counters' not found.
  - /base: Required property 'xtval_nonzero' not found.
  - /extensions: Required property 'A' not found.
  - /extensions: Required property 'D' not found.
  - /extensions: Required property 'F' not found.
  - /extensions: Required property 'S' not found.
  - /extensions: Required property 'Smcntrpmf' not found.
  - /extensions: Required property 'Sscofpmf' not found.
  - /extensions: Required property 'Ssqosid' not found.
  - /extensions: Required property 'Sstc' not found.
  - /extensions: Required property 'Sstvala' not found.
  - /extensions: Required property 'Stateen' not found.
  - /extensions: Required property 'Sv32' not found.
  - /extensions: Required property 'Sv39' not found.
  - /extensions: Required property 'Sv48' not found.
  - /extensions: Required property 'Sv57' not found.

I'm not sure what this list is. It doesn't look like UDB output and I don't recognize the format. What file required this?

Why do I have to specify all those if I do not implement any of it anyway? My understanding was that previously any extension that was not specified as supported was implicitly assumed to not be supported and didn't require an explicit entry. But now the configuration for simpler cores blows up in size with a large amount of redundancy.

For the UDB config file, that should still be the case. You only need to specify the extensions that you support.

[nazar-pc]

I'm not sure what this list is. It doesn't look like UDB output and I don't recognize the format. What file required this?

Here is the latest CI run with HPM_COUNTER_EN, MCOUNTENABLE_EN, and NUM_PMP_ENTRIES already added (these alone are +100 lines of extra configuration for no good reason):

https://github.com/nazar-pc/abundance/actions/runs/24294961892/job/70938229599

And here are the configs from corresponding commit: https://github.com/nazar-pc/abundance/tree/663e599a82c1ee0303e4f9dc133b591bd8cfb2c6/crates/execution/ab-riscv-act4-runner/res/abundance

You should be able to reproduce it with them.

[jordancarlin]

Looks like those errors are coming from the Sail config file. Sail has always required all keys to be defined in the json config file (including extensions that are not implemented), so I’m not sure how that worked for you before. If you are only building unpriv tests, we used to use an internal Sail config file instead of the user provided one, but that ran into memory map issues, so we stopped doing that.

[nazar-pc]

Hm, any hope to make it not require things that are not implemented anyway?

[pmundkur]

Currently, I'm afraid all keys are required. The configuration is checked against a JSON schema, and that requires all properties to be present with legal values.

[jordancarlin]

My hope is that eventually we will be able to generate the sail config from the UDB config to simplify the process, but that’s probably still pretty far off.

[pmundkur]

These messages look like a newer different build of the Sail model is being used than is supported by the ACT4 config files. You should use the 0.10 release for now.

[nazar-pc]

I am using 0.10, specifically I'm using container image built from this Dockerfile: https://github.com/riscv/riscv-arch-test/pull/1161/changes#diff-dd2c0eb6ea5cfc6c4bd4eac30934e2d5746747af48fef6da689e85b752f39557R22