The RISC-V ecosystem just gained a serious contender for desktop and edge computing workloads. SpacemiT has officially launched the K3 Pico-ITX SBC and K3-CoM260 system-on-module, both built around the company's octa-core X100 processor clocked at up to 2.4 GHz. The K3 SoC is fully RVA23-compliant, which means it can run Ubuntu 26.04 natively alongside other distributions like Fedora, Deepin 25, and OpenKylin 2.0. Critically for Linux users, the K3 SoC and Pico-ITX board have already landed initial mainline support in Linux 7.0, with device tree sources merged under arch/riscv/boot/dts/spacemit/ thanks to upstream work by RISCstar, and Linux 7.1 is queued to expand that foundation with peripheral driver coverage including Ethernet, I2C, GPIO, PMIC, and UART support. Early benchmarks put multi-core performance on par with the Rockchip RK3588, with single-core numbers trailing just slightly behind the Raspberry Pi 5.
What sets this board apart from most RISC-V hardware is the sheer density of I/O packed into its 10 x 8.6 cm (3.9 x 3.4 inch) Pico-ITX Plus footprint. The spec sheet reads more like a networking appliance than a single-board computer: a 10GbE SFP+ cage driven by a Realtek RTL8127 controller sits alongside a standard Gigabit Ethernet port, WiFi 6, Bluetooth 5.2, and an M.2 Key-B slot for optional 4G LTE or 5G cellular modems. Storage options include up to 256GB of onboard UFS 2.2 plus an M.2 Key-M 2280 slot for PCIe Gen3 x4 NVMe drives. Display output comes via eDP and USB-C with DisplayPort 1.2 Alt Mode, and the board supports up to 65W power delivery through either a 12V ATX connector or USB PD.
The K3 also packs eight dedicated RISC-V A100 AI cores with 1024-bit RVV 1.0 vector support, delivering up to 60 TOPS at INT4 precision. Combined with a hardware VPU capable of 4K H.265 decoding at 120 FPS and encoding at 60 FPS, plus an Imagination BXM4-64-MC1 GPU with Vulkan 1.3 and OpenCL 3.0 support, the K3 is clearly targeting AI inference and media processing at the edge. Users prioritizing a fully open graphics stack should note that the Vulkan and OpenCL interfaces are served by proprietary closed-source userspace libraries from Imagination Technologies rather than an open driver. Hardware virtualization support through RV Hypervisor 1.0, AIA, and IOMMU extensions adds another dimension for server and containerized workloads.
The board ships pre-loaded with Bianbu 3.0, an Ubuntu-based distribution, and configurations with 16GB or 32GB of LPDDR5 at 6400 MT/s are available. Distribution is handled through multiple vendors: Sipeed sells the board under the SpacemiT name, Banana Pi markets the SoM devkit as the BPI-SM10, and Milk-V brands the SBC as the Jupiter 2. The Pico-ITX SBC starts at $299 (€275) while the CoM260 SoM devkit starts at $309 (€284), with the SBC design being identical across all three distributors. The CoM260 module uses a 260-pin SO-DIMM edge connector that is physically compatible with Jetson Orin Nano/NX carrier boards, including the Radxa C200.
