Milk-V's Jupiter Is a Mini-ITX Desktop-Class RISC-V System with Expandability, AI Smarts, and More

Single-board computer specialist Milk-V is preparing to open orders for Jupiter, its mini-ITX system based on the SpacemIT K1 or M1 eight-core RISC-V processor — complete with a dedicated neural processing unit (NPU) delivering two tera-operations per second (TOPS) of compute for on-device machine learning and artificial intelligence.

"Milk-V Jupiter, powered by the SpacemIT K1/M1 SoC [System-on-Chip] is the world's first mini-ITX device to support both RVA22 and RVV1.0," Milk-V explains of its latest design. "This device integrates a standard PCIe [PCI Express] connector supporting common PCIe devices such as graphics cards, PCIe to SATA adapters, and network cards. It features dual gigabit Ethernet interfaces, onboard Wi-Fi 6/BT [Bluetooth] 5.2, and supports NVMe [Non-Volatile Memory Express] SSDs, making it an ideal choice for an entry-level RISC-V desktop."

Designed as a desktop-class system, the Jupiter's system-on-chip includes eight 64-bit processor cores based on the RISC-V architecture — though, at the time of writing, the company had not confirmed clock speed, though SpacemIT rates the K1 up to 2GHz with the M1 offering improved performance. As Milk-V says, what makes the chip particularly interesting is its support for both the RVA22 extension profile and the fully-ratified RVV 1.0 vector extensions — the latter offering a performance boost for on-device ML and AI.

Those workloads can be further accelerated by SpacemIT's inclusion of a dedicated neural coprocessor, offering a claimed two TOPS of compute at minimum precision. There's an Imagination BXE-2-32 graphics processor with OpenGL ES 1.1/3.2, EGL 1.5, OpenCL 3.0, and Vulkan 1.3 support, hardware H.265/H.264/VP8/VP9/MPEG4/MPEG2 decoders good to 4k60 and H.265/H.264/VP8/VP9 good to 4k30, and a choice of 4GB, 8GB, or 16GB of LPDDR4X memory.

While technically functional as a single-board computer, the Jupiter is also expandable: there's a connector for an optional eMMC module as well as a microSD Card slot for storage, an M.2 M-key connector with two PCI Express Gen. 2 lanes for an optional NVMe SSD, and an eight-lane mechanical two-lane-electrical PCIe Gen. 2 slot for add-in boards. There are two gigabit Ethernet ports supporting optional Power-over-Ethernet (PoE) and two USB 3.0 Type-A, two USB 2.0 Type-A, and one USB 2.0 On-The-Go Type-C ports, plus two USB 3.0 and two USB 2.0 ports available via a front header connector. There's two SATA ports, a UART bus, and analog audio jacks too.

In short, the Jupiter includes everything you'd expect to see in a desktop-class machine — including the promise of support for Canonical's Ubuntu Linux distribution, which is rapidly becoming a popular choice for RISC-V machines thanks to the company's first-party support for several popular devices. Milk-V also promises support for Casa OS, a Linux distribution tailored for network-attached storage (NAS) devices.

More information on the Milk-V Jupiter is available on the official product page; pricing has not yet been disclosed, and at the time of writing the retail partners listed were exclusively shipping to China.