A review of the recently available RISC-V development board, Jupiter 2, distributed by Milk V:

Jupiter | Milk-V

Jupiter

Milk-V Jupiter 2 is one of the first to ship with the new Spacemit K3 RVA23 processors. The performance of SpacemiT K3 is pretty good and a great development board that is almost ready for daily use. It's a decent option for early adopters. A few useful notes for new users: 1. Install Ubuntu 26.04 instead of the default OS. It shipped with Bianbu, a distro based on Ubuntu. The default desktop was LXQt instead of Gnome, which complicated keyboard configuration and lacked several features. Switching to Gnome solved those issues. Images for Ubuntu are available from:

GitHub

GitHub - spacemit-com/K3-Ubuntu-Images: Build a UEFI-bootable Ubuntu RISC-V preinstalled image for the SpacemiT K3 Pico-ITX board and flash it through fastboot.

Build a UEFI-bootable Ubuntu RISC-V preinstalled image for the SpacemiT K3 Pico-ITX board and flash it through fastboot. - spacemit-com/K3-Ubuntu-I...

2. It didn't ship with documentation; however, the documentation for Spacemit Pico-ITX K3 is sufficient as it is the same board:

SpacemiT

3. You will likely need a powered USB dock to connect to a display (capable of 65W). The ports for USB-C power and display are combined; it requires the use of a powered USB dock, or similar, to attach to a display. Otherwise, SSH is enabled by default for remote access. Displayport 4K@60hz worked via a USB hub. 4. You will need a 65W power USB-C power supply, one is not included. It can be difficult to determine if the device is on; the product lacks a clear power button or power state indicator. The power LED is only viewable at an angle from within the enclosure. A standard phone USB-C charger will likely not provide enough to keep it running consistantly and may unexpectedly power off.

The new Obtanium user interface is better, updating multiple apps is much smoother now.

@Ken Berry, MD with Joel Salatin of Polyface Farm:

Subtly humorous, "A delightful proof that 2+2=4":

With Ubuntu 26.04, compiling Firefox on Spacemit K3 was pretty simple and performant. It was only necessary to manually install a riscv build for wasi-sdk. Compiling Chromium on the other hand, has not been as clear. Ubuntu packages chromium, so it isn't necessary; however, it is unclear how it was built. The build process and tools for Chromium seem tethered to x86_64, most builds for riscv may be cross compiled.

The performance of SpacemiT K3 is pretty good, a huge leap forward from the SiFive U74 cores in the StarFive JH7110.

Joel Salatin is producing videos: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCc_ZxWQCwj2aK6BTavK4hSQ

0.7 nm chips

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