SystemVerilog has added support for classes, tasks and functions to be defined in the compilation unit scope. We currently have messages that this is not supported, but many pieces of SystemVerilog code use this feature (mostly classes). My assumption is that adding support for classes in the compilation unit scope will add most of what is needed to add functions and tasks so I am grouping them all together.
Attached are code examples that run correctly on other simulators.
The sv_root_class.v function works in the current (2014-09-24) git master. I've added the test to the ivtest suite.
This is now fixed in git master, as of 2014-10-02.