RISC-V

This tiny PC runs Ubuntu 26.04 LTS on open source RISC-V

Ubuntu 26.04 LTS only supports RISC-V devices that meet RVA23 standards, and this one does.

Jordan Gloor

Jordan Gloor

— 2 min read
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The Milk-V Jupiter2 aluminium case with two antennas attached to the back, on top of a blue pattern of Tux characters.

Pre-orders are available for Milk-V's first mini PC that uses an RVA23-compliant RISC-V processor. It officially supports Ubuntu 26.04 LTS (and Fedora Linux) along with a few China-based distributions.

Introducing the Milk-V Jupiter2

The Milk-V Jupiter2 is a single-board computer sporting the Spacemit K3 RISC-V AI CPU, all packaged up in an aluminum Pico-ITX case. If that was too much acronym slop for you, the important point is that it's on the cutting edge of open source processor development, and in a tiny form factor.

The Jupiter 2 board annotated with labels pointing to the Nano SIM slot, the Ethernet port, the SFP+ port, the M.2 slot, and the wireless card.
Credit: Milk-V

Notable Specs

  • Processor: 8x X100 64-bit RISC-V CPU cores clocked at up to 2.4 GHz
  • AI Acceleration: 8× A100 AI cores clocked at up to 60 TOPS
  • Graphics: IMG BXM-4-64-MC1
  • Memory: Up to 36GB LPDDR5 RAM
  • Storage: Up to 286GB onboard UFS, expandable with M.2 2280 PCIe Gen3 x4 NVMe slot
  • Display: 1x DisplayPort USB-C port supporting 4K at 60Hz, 1x embedded DisplayPort supporting 2.5K at 90Hz
  • Networking: Wi-fi 6 and Bluetooth 5.2, 1x gigabit Ethernet, 1x 10-gig SFP+ port, 1x nano SIM slot
  • USB: 2x USB 3.2 Gen1 Type-C, 4x USB 2.0 Type-A

The enclosure includes active cooling, and powering the board requires a USB-C 65W power supply that appears to not be included with the device.

The Milk-V Jupiter 2 packaging, with a diagram of the enclosure's rear view along with text reading "The first RVA23-compliant RISC-V SBC."
Credit: Milk-V

Zooming out

Why this mini PC matters: RISC-V is a fully open source architecture that makes computing affordable and power-efficient. While many Linux distros have supported it for a while now, pre-RVA23 standards limited its usefulness, especially for desktop use. A compliant device like this should make daily driving on RISC-V much more realistic.

Check out this video from Explaining Computers for a look at what the RISC-V experience has been like until recently.

My take: I'm looking forward to testing how much faster Ubuntu is on the Jupiter 2 compared to my StarFive VisionFive 2 board, which struggles to do anything graphically intensive.

Diving in

Go further: See Milk-V's official announcement for more details and links to the (not yet complete) documentation.

Get it now: You can pre-order the Jupiter 2 from Hong Kong-based Arace Tech, though I couldn't find any estimates on delivery dates. The Arace Tech community forum has been advertising a $5 coupon for a $50 discount on the pre-order since January.

  • The 8GB RAM model goes for $300, and at checkout I was quoted $55 for shipping to the US.

Thanks to Linux Gizmos for pointing this out.

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