Milk-V Offers RISC-V RVA23 Compatibility with the New Multi-Core Mini-ITX Jupiter2 SBC

RISC-V single-board computer (SBC) specialist Milk-V has announced the follow-up to its Jupiter mini-ITX board, unsurprisingly called the Jupiter2 — and delivering its first mainstream model with RISC-V RVA23 support.

"[The] Milk-V Jupiter2 [is] the first RVA23-compliant RISC-V SBC," the company claims of the device. "High-performance CPU, eight-core X100 @ 2.4GHz. On-device AI [Artificial Intelligence] acceleration, eight-core A100 AI CPU. RVA23 + RVV 1.0. Comprehensive hardware virtualization. Powerful storage expansion. Dual display outputs. High-frame-rate video codec. Real-time and industrial expansion."

Milk-V announced the original Jupiter back in June 2024 as a mini-ITX single-board computer built around the SpacemIT K1 or M1 eight-core system-on-chip, implementing the RVA22 extension profile with RVV 1.0 vector extensions — meaning it falls short of the RVA23 requirement that Canonical has set as the "baseline" for Ubuntu Linux support. The Jupiter2, naturally, fixes that, moving to a SpacemIT K3 with eight X100 2.4GHz cores implementing the RVA23 profile.

Alongside those eight application-class cores, the chip includes an additional eight A100 cores for machine learning and computer vision acceleration, delivering a claimed 60 tera-operations per second (TOPS) at INT4 precision, and an Imagination BXM-4-64-MC1 graphics processor with Vulkan 1.3, OpenCL 3.0, and OpenGL ES 1.1/2.0/3.2 support. There's the same RVV 1.0 vector extensions as the original Jupiter, RV Hypervisor 1.0 and IOMMU extensions for virtualization, and support for up to 32GB of LPDDR5 memory.

Elsewhere on the board is up to 256GB of UFS storage with M.2 M-key PCI Express Gen. 3 four-lane connectivity for Non-Volatile Memory Express (NVMe) expansion or accelerator use, an SFP+ slot for 10-gigabit-Ethernet plus a native gigabit Ethernet port, a nano-SIM slot for optional cellular connectivity via an M.2 B-key slot, Wi-Fi 6 and Bluetooth 5.2 radios, an embedded DisplayPort (eDP) video output good for 2.5k90 and USB Type-C with Display Port Alt. Mode for 4k60, hardware H.265/H.264,VP9 decoding at up to 4k120 and H.265/H.264 encoding at up to 4k60, and a dual-core RT24 64-bit RISC-V coprocessor for real-time workloads with I2C, I2S, CAN-FD, and UART buses plus general-purpose input/output (GPIO) pins. For peripherals, there are two USB 3.0 Gen. 1 Type-C ports and four USB 2.0 Type-A ports.

More information on the board is available on the Milk-V website; the company has partnered with Arace for international orders, with pricing set at $300 for a model with 8GB of RAM, $380 with 16GB, and $575 for 32GB, with pre-orders receiving a $50 discount for a $5 deposit. All models come with an aluminum chassis and integrated cooling fan.