Firefly AIBOX-K3 – An Edge AI mini PC powered by SpacemiT K3 RISC-V SoC

Back in July last year, SpacemiT unveiled the SpacemiT K3 SoC. After that, we saw some system information and early benchmarks come out around January this year. The company has just officially launched the K3 Pico-ITX SBC, which is now available through various distributors. Firefly has launched its own K3 hardware with the AIBOX-K3, a complete industrial-grade RISC-V edge computing box.

The AIBOX-K3 Edge AI mini PC is built around the SpacemIT Key Stone K3 octa-core processor and features an integrated AI engine that delivers up to 60 TOPS of compute performance, making it suitable for local LLM inference and edge AI applications.

Firefly AIBOX-K3 specifications:

• SoC – SpacemiT K3
  • CPU
    • 8x 64-bit RISC-V X100 “big” cores clocked up to 2.4 GHz, RVA23 compliance; 130 KDMIPS performance (similar to RK3588)
    • 8x RISC-V A100 AI Cores with support for up to 1024-bit RVV1.0 parallel computing, optimized for matrix operations.
  • GPU – Imagination Technologies BXM4-64-MC1 GPU with Vulkan 1.3, OpenCL 3.0, and OpenGL ES 1.1/2.0/3.2 support
  • VPU
    • Video decoder – H.265, H.264, VP9 up to 4K @ 120 FPS
    • Video encoder – H.265, H.264 up to 4K @ 60 FPS
  • AI – Up to 60 TOPS (INT4) of AI performance using dedicated TCM and DMA acceleration channels
• System Memory – 8GB, 16GB, or 32GB LPDDR5, 6400 MT/s (51GB/s bandwidth)
• Storage
  • 128GB, 256GB, or 512GB UFS 2.2 on-board storage
  • M.2 socket for NVMe SSDs
• Display – HDMI 2.0 port supporting up to 4K@60Hz
• Networking – Dual Gigabit Ethernet (1000 Mbps) via RJ45 ports
• USB
  • 2x USB 3.0 Type-A ports (Max: 1A)
  • 1x USB 3.0 DRD Type-C port (includes USB 2.0 OTG functionality)
  • 1x USB Type-C Console port for serial debug
• Expansion – M.2 socket (PCIe 3.0 x4) supporting 2242 or 2280 NVMe SSDs or other compatible modules
• Misc – Power button, Boot button, and Status LED
• Power Supply – 9V to 20V  via a 5.5 x 2.1mm barrel jack (12V/5A recommended)
• Dimensions – 93.4 x 93.4 x 50.0 mm
• Weight – Approximately 500 grams
• Temperature Range – Operating: -20°C to 60°C; storage: -20°C to 70°C
• Humidity – 10%~90%RH (Non condensating)
• Enclosure – Industrial-grade aluminum body with porous hexagonal structure and strip grille ventilation

The device delivers up to 60 TOPS (Sparse) of AI power and supports multimodal acceleration, enabling it to run large models with up to 30B parameters, including Mixture of Experts (MoE) models. According to Firefly, the system can achieve inference speeds of over 10 tokens per second when running a 30B model locally.

Security and virtualization are handled at the hardware level. The SoC uses a three-level M/S/U privilege architecture and includes protection against Specter and Meltdown–type attacks. It also supports PMP/ePMP and IOPMP for memory and I/O protection, as well as built-in encryption engines such as AES, SHA, RSA, SM2, SM3, and SM4.

In the download section, the company only provides basic Linux and Windows flashing tools. This means the operating system is not guaranteed to ship pre-installed, so the software may need to be installed separately. After looking further, I found that SpacemiT supports multiple operating systems on the K3 platform, including Bianbu OS 3.0, Ubuntu 26.04 (developed in collaboration with Canonical), OpenHarmony, OpenKylin, Fedora, Deepin, and others. The SpacemiT K3 support has already been added to Linux 7.0 (initial support only in mainline), and features such as Docker, KVM virtualization, and ROS are available. More information is available on SpacemIT GitHub account.

The Firefly SpacemiT K3-based AIBOX-K3 Edge AI mini PC starts at $349 on the company’ store in the 8GB RAM + 128GB storage configuration, while the 32GB RAM version costs $689.

Debashis Das

Debashis Das is a technical content writer and embedded engineer with over five years of experience in the industry. With expertise in Embedded C, PCB Design, and SEO optimization, he effectively blends difficult technical topics with clear communication

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