Milk-V Surprises with a Second RISC-V SBC — Physically Compatible with the Raspberry Pi 3 Model B

RISC-V single-board computer newcomer Milk-V has announced its second hardware design, this time borrowing a very familiar form factor from a certain fruit-themed company: the credit card-sized Milk-V Mars.

"Milk-V Mars is a high-performance RISC-V single-board computer (SBC) the size of a credit card, built on the StarFive JH7110," Milk-V says of its latest device, which follows the unveiling of the high-performance 64-core Milk-V Pioneer earlier this month. "This four-core device supports a plug-and-play eMMC module, as well as up to 8GB of LPDDR4 memory."

Even the most cursory glance at the layout of the Milk-V Mars will bring the popular Raspberry Pi to mind, and it's no accident: Milk-V has very deliberately copied the overall layout of the Raspberry Pi 3 Model B, to the point where it can be inserted into any Raspberry Pi 3 Model B-compatible case — even those with integrated heatsinks. The usual 40-pin general-purpose input/output (GPIO) header is present and correct, too, along with a four-pin connector for an optional Power-over-Ethernet (PoE) add-on.

The external ports may be in their usual places, but they're not a one-for-one match. The Mars comes with three USB 3.0 ports and one USB 2.0 port, to the Raspberry Pi 3 Model B's four USB 2.0 ports and Raspberry Pi 4 Model B's two USB 3.0 and two USB 2.0 ports, and there's a surprise E-key M.2 slot on the board too. There board offers two- and four-lane Display Serial Interface (DSI) connectivity and a single Camera Serial Interface (CSI) connector which is referred to as offering four or two lanes depending on which part of Milk-V's documentation you're reading. Finally, there's microSD storage, a slot for an optional eMMC module, and gigabit Ethernet, plus a USB Type-C port for power.

All of this is built around the increasingly-popular StarFive JH7110 system-on-chip (SoC), the same chip at the heart of StarFive's rival VisionFive 2 and PINE64's Star64. The part includes four SiFive U74 64-bit RISC-V cores running at up to 1.5GHz and an Imagination BXE-2-32 graphics processor — a big upgrade from the two 1GHz cores and lack of GPU in the earlier JH7100 which powered the first VisionFive board. There's also a choice of 1GB, 2GB, 4GB, or 8GB of LPDDR4 memory — the same options as Raspberry Pi provides for the Raspberry Pi 4 Model B.

The one thing Milk-V has not yet shared: pricing. Considering it uses the same SoC as the VisionFive 2 and Star64 and offers the same RAM configuration options, the company is likely to release the board at roughly the same price point — around the $60-90 level, depending on RAM capacity chosen.

More information is available on the Milk-V website.