SpacemiT's K3 processor is making its way into a new developer kit from Banana Pi, and the specs are worth paying attention to. The Banana Pi BPI-SM10 pairs an octa-core 2.4 GHz RISC-V chip compliant with the RVA23 profile with an 8-core AI accelerator capable of 60 TOPS, up to 32GB of LPDDR5-6400 RAM, and a carrier board loaded with connectivity options. Banana Pi claims the system can run 30 billion parameter AI models at 10 tokens per second while consuming between 18 and 35 watts. The K3 SoC landed initial mainline support in Linux 7.0, making it one of the first RVA23-compliant designs with upstream kernel patches in place, and additional K3 enablement is expected in Linux 7.1. SpacemiT and Canonical also announced Ubuntu 26.04 LTS support for K3-based devices, giving the BPI-SM10 a credible software path, though device-specific Linux images for the board were still coming together at launch.
The two-piece design uses a compute module roughly the size of an NVIDIA Jetson Orin NX that slots into a carrier board measuring 10.3 x 9.1 x 3.5 cm (4.1 x 3.6 x 1.4 inches). The carrier board brings dual M.2 slots (one PCIe Gen 4 x4, one PCIe Gen 4 x2), four USB 3.2 Gen 2 Type-A ports, one USB 3.2 Gen 2 Type-C, DisplayPort 1.2, Gigabit Ethernet, dual MIPI-CSI camera connectors, and a 40-pin expansion header. That 40-pin GPIO header keeps the door open for the kind of hardware tinkering that single-board computer enthusiasts expect.
Banana Pi has not announced pricing yet, though the similar Radxa C200 Orin Dev Kit with an Arm-based chip sells for $499 (460 euros). The company is also preparing a K3 Pico-ITX board built around the same SpacemiT K3 chip in a single-board 6.4 x 6.4 cm (2.5 x 2.5 inch) format, adding an eDP connector, front panel header, RTC battery, and a 10-gigabit Ethernet port. The Pico-ITX design appears to be a SpacemiT reference platform, so expect other manufacturers to release similar boards as RISC-V continues gaining ground in the enthusiast space.
