SpacemiT's K3 RISC-V Chip Brings First Commercial RVA23 Hardware to Market
SpacemiT demonstrated its K3 RISC-V system-on-chip at the Ubuntu Summit, marking the first commercially available hardware supporting the RVA23 specification that was previously only available through emulation. The 16-core chip, available on a Banana Pi miniature motherboard starting around £300, performs comparably to a Raspberry Pi 5 but at roughly double the price. The availability of RVA23 hardware is significant for Linux distributions like Ubuntu 25.10, which require it for their RISC-V variants.
SpacemiT, a Chinese semiconductor company, has brought the first commercially available RISC-V hardware supporting the RVA23 specification to market with its K3 system-on-chip. The 16-core processor combines eight X100 cores running at up to 2.4 GHz with eight AI cores, meeting the RVA23S64 specification that includes vector-math acceleration and hypervisor capabilities. The chip is available on the Banana Pi K3 Pico-ITX miniature motherboard with configurations offering 16-32 GB of LPDDR5 memory and 128-256 GB of storage, priced around £300-£595. This addresses a critical gap that existed when Ubuntu 25.10 launched in October 2025 with RISC-V support but no actual RVA23 hardware available—users could only run it through QEMU emulation. Benchmarks show the K3 performs at roughly Raspberry Pi 5 levels in some tests while exceeding the SiFive P550 in others, though at approximately double the price of a Pi 5. The device supports Ubuntu and other Linux distributions, with hands-on testing confirming smooth video playback and responsive system performance.
What different sources said
- The RegisterCenter
SpacemiT shows off usably quick RISC-V mini desktop
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