[FAQ] Which branch should I use?

[NewPaulWalker]

Before start

• I have read the XiangShan Documents. 我已经阅读过香山文档。
• I have searched the previous issues and did not find anything relevant. 我已经搜索过之前的 issue，并没有找到相关的。
• I have searched the previous discussions and did not find anything relevant. 我已经搜索过之前的 discussions，并没有找到相关的。

Describe you problem

I'm not sure which branch I should use.

What did you do before

I know that XiangShan has three versions: Yanqihu, Nanhu, and Kunminghu.

[NewPaulWalker]

We have 3 generations of XiangShan micro-architecture.

• 1st generation: Yanqihu (雁栖湖)
• 2nd generation: Nanhu (南湖)
• 3rd generation: Kunminghu (昆明湖)

Each generation may have multiple released/under-development version. Please refer to the following table:

Generation-Version	Branch	Maintenance?	Development?
Yanqihu	yanqihu	✅(minimum)
Nanhu-V2	nanhu	✅(minimum)
Nanhu-V3	Siudya/Nanhu
Nanhu-V5	OpenXiangShan-Nanhu/OpenNanhu-V5	✅	✅
Kunminghu-V2	kunminghu-v2	✅
Kunminghu-V3	kunminghu-v3	✅	✅

Currently, we recommend using kunminghu-v2 for related work (FPGA deployment, fuzz verification, etc.). And using kunminghu-v3 for development of XiangShan itself.

Updated 2026-03-06.

Updates:

• 2026-02-25: rewrite
• 2026-03-06: rename master to kunminghu-v2