SpacemIT Category - CNX Software - Embedded Systems News

May 15, 2026May 15, 2026 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 7 Comments

Start9 RISC-V Router features SpacemiT K1 SoC, runs StartWRT OpenWrt fork (Crowdfunding)

Start9’s “RISC-V Router” is powered by a SpacemiT K1 octa-core RISC-V processor paired with 4GB RAM and 16GB eMMC flash, and offers dual GbE networking, as well as an AsiaRF AW7915-NP1 WiFi 6 4T4R module enabling up to 2401 Mbps combined data link. It’s not exactly a high-end router, but Start9 claims it is the “most open router on the market” thanks to its RISC-V processor, OpenSBI open-source boot stack, and StartWrt operating system, a fork of OpenWrt. Start9 router specifications: SoC – SpacemiT K1 CPU – 8-core X60 RISC-V processor with single-core performance equivalent to about 1.3x the performance of an Arm Cortex-A55 GPU – Imagination IMG BXE-2-32 with support for OpenCL 3.0, OpenGL ES3.2, Vulkan 1.2 VPU – H.265, H.264, VP9, VP8 4K encoding/encoding NPU – 2.0 TOPS AI accelerator System Memory – 4GB LPDDR4 Storage 16GB eMMC flash MicroSD card slot Networking 2x Gigabit Ethernet RJ45 ports […]

May 13, 2026 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 1 Comment

SpacemiT K3-powered DC-ROMA RISC-V motherboard III is made for the Framework Laptop 13

Framework Laptop 13 SpacemiT K3 mainboard

Another day, another SpacemiT K3 device is released, namely Deep Computing DC-ROMA RISC-V Mainboard III for Framework Laptop 13, following the K3 Pico-ITX SBC and K3-CoM260 (and related Jupiter 2 and Banana Pi BPI-SM10) on Monday, and the Firefly AIBOX-K3 on Tuesday. Initially launched with Intel processors, the Framework Laptop 13 repairable and modular laptop had already got a RISC-V motherboard with the StarFive JH7110-based “DC-ROMA RISC-V Mainboard” in 2024, followed by an ESWIN EIC7702X variant the next year. The third RISC-V mainboard features the octa-core K3 64-bit RISC-V SoC with up to 60 TOPS (Sparse) of AI performance, up to 32GB RAM, and an optional 1TB NVMe SSD. Specifications of the Framework Laptop 13 with DC-ROMA RISC-V Mainboard III: 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 […]

May 12, 2026May 12, 2026 by Debashis Das - 5 Comments

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

AIBOX K3 High Performance RISC V Edge Box

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 […]

May 11, 2026May 11, 2026 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 33 Comments

RVA23-compliant K3 Pico-ITX SBC and K3-CoM260 SoM feature SpacemiT K3 octa-core RISC-V AI SoC, up to 32GB RAM, 256GB UFS

SpacemiT has now officially launched the K3 Pico-ITX SBC and K3-CoM260 system-on-module with the RVA23-compliant, SpacemiT K3 octa-core X100 CPU with up to 60 TOPS of AI performance, up to 32GB LPDDR5, 256GB UFS, and PCIe Gen3 x4 NVMe SSD support. The board also features an eDP connector, a 10GbE SFP+ cage, a Gigabit Ethernet RJ45 port, built-in WiFi 6 and Bluetooth 5.2 wireless connectivity, two USB Type-C connectors, four USB 2.0 ports, an M.2 Key-B socket coupled with a NanoSIM card slot for 4G LTE or 5G cellular connectivity, and more. K3 Pico-ITX SBC specifications: System-on-Module – K3-CoM260 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 […]

April 13, 2026 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 6 Comments

Linux 7.0 Release – Main changes, Arm, RISC-V, and MIPS architectures

Linus Torvalds has just released Linux 7.0 on LKML: The last week of the release continued the same “lots of small fixes” trend, but it all really does seem pretty benign, so I’ve tagged the final 7.0 and pushed it out. I suspect it’s a lot of AI tool use that will keep finding corner cases for us for a while, so this may be the “new normal” at least for a while. Only time will tell. Anyway, this last week was a little bit of everything: networking (core and drivers), arch fixes, tooling and selftests, and various random fixes all over the place. Let’s keep testing, and obviously tomorrow the merge window for 7.1 opens. I already have four dozen pull requests pending – thank you to all the early people. Linus This follows the Linux 6.19 release about two months ago, which brought us PCIe link encryption and […]

February 9, 2026 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 2 Comments

Linux 6.19 Release – Main changes, Arm, RISC-V, and MIPS architectures

Linus Torvalds has just released Linux 6.19 on the Linux Kernel Mailing List (LKML): No big surprises anywhere last week, so 6.19 is out as expected – just as the US prepares to come to a complete standstill later today watching the latest batch of televised commercials. The betting man would expect them all to be AI-generated, but maybe some enterprising company decides to buck the trend? Doubtful, but there’s always a slight chance. But for anybody outside the US, maybe taking the newest kernel out for a spin instead is an option? I have more than three dozen pull requests for when the merge window opens tomorrow – thank you to all the early maintainers. And as people have mostly figured out, I’m getting to the point where I’m being confused by large numbers (almost running out of fingers and toes again), so the next kernel is going to […]

January 24, 2026 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 2 Comments

FOSDEM 2026 schedule – Embedded, RISC-V, Robotics, Rust, Open Hardware, and more

FOSDEM 2026 will take place on January 31-February 1, with thousands of developers meeting in Brussels to discuss open-source software & hardware projects. The free-to-attend “Free and Open Source Software Developers’ European Meeting” gets more traction every year, and in 2026, there will be at least 1,113 speakers, 1,016 events, 70 tracks, and potentially close to 10,000 attendees. As usual, I’ll create a virtual schedule with sessions most relevant to the topics covered on CNX Software from the “Embedded, Mobile and Automotive” and “Open Hardware and CAD/CAM” devrooms, but also other devrooms, including “RISC-V”, “Robotics and simulation”, and “FOSS on Mobile”, among others. I’m aware some of the talks overlap by a couple of minutes or so… FOSDEM 2026 Day 1 – Saturday, January 31 10:40 – 11:15 – RISC-V Vector optimisations in FFmpeg by Rémi Denis-Courmont FFmpeg is the most versatile multimedia codec and format support library, and was […]

January 23, 2026May 11, 2026 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 23 Comments

SpacemiT K3 “16-core” RISC-V SoC system information and (early) benchmarks

SpacemiT K3 is an upcoming RVA23-compliant 64-bit RISC-V processor based on X100 cores clocked at up to 2.5 GHz. So far, we had limited information, but SpacemiT gave remote access to one SpacemiT K3-powered server to Sander, and he was kind enough to share some system information and early benchmarks.

Let’s start with system information reported by inxi utility: