Sipeed Crams 32GB LPDDR5 and a 60 TOPS NPU Into a Compact RISC-V Board That Hits 15 Tokens/s on Qwen-3.5 35B AI LLMs

Sipeed has unveiled its new RISC-V powered SBC platform, the K3 series, which can run up to Qwen3.5 35B AI LLMs and start at $299.

The Sipeed K3 SBCs Pack A Punch For AI LLMs In a Compact "Pico-ITX" Form Factor, Up To 32 GB Memory Support

Chinese manufacturer, Sipeed, has partnered with SPACEMIT to launch its brand new K3 series SBCs or Single-Board Computers (such as the Raspberry Pi). These PCs are normally aimed at AI, Edge, and Networking applications. Sipeed has leveraged SPACEMIT's Key Stone K3 AI CPUs, which are based on the RISC-V architecture, and offer some decent AI LLM capabilities for their size.

Some highlights of the K3 series include:

• Brutal Power - 8x X100 High-Performance Cores + 8x A100 AI Cores. Fusion architecture delivering 130k DMIPS general computing power.
  
• LLM Native - Run 30B parameter models locally and smoothly. Inference speed > 10 Tokens/s. No cloud needed, private intelligence.
  
• Blazing Speed - 32GB LPDDR5 Memory (6400Mbps) with 51GB/s bandwidth. Equipped with full-speed PCIe Gen3 and USB 3.0.
  
• Seamless Upgrade - Hardware compatible with Jetson Orin Nano carrier boards. Reuse existing cases and ecosystems, migrating from ARM to RISC-V smoothly.

Starting with the specifications, the SPACEMIT K3 AI CPU comes with 8 X100 high-performance cores and 8 A100 AI cores. These are part of the fusion architecture, which delivers up to 130,000 DMIPS for general-purpose computing. The chip operates at a clock speed of 2.4 GHz and is equivalent to the ARM-A76 CPU in terms of performance.

For the AI side, the K3 AI NPU offers up to 60 TOPS of AI compute capabilities, supporting various data types such as BF16, FP16, FP8, INT8, and INT4. The SBCs are rated to easily run up to 30B AI LLMs & have scored a 84% intelligence rating of a 235B model. As a demonstration, Sipeed states that the K3 can run Qwen-3.5 35B easily, delivering up to 15 Tokens/s.

In terms of memory support, the CPU comes with LPDDR4X-4266 and LPDDR5-6400 support in up to 32 GB capacities. The total memory bandwidth is rated at up to 51 GB/s for the LPDDR5 solution. Sipeed is listing three models of the K3 in 8 GB, 16 GB, and 32 GB flavors.

Coming to the design, the K3 CoM260 Kit is a 69.6mm x 45mm module that features a 260-pin SO-DIMM slot and is compatible with NVIDIA's Jetson Orin series. The platform supports Ubuntu 26.04 & ROS, with a rich set of IO capabilities. As for the K3 Pico-ITX, the board comes in a 100mm x 86mm form factor, and has rich IO support, such as:

• 10GbE Strike: Onboard 10 Gigabit Ethernet + Gigabit LAN. No more I/O bottlenecks for edge computing.
• Modern Power: Dual Type-C ports with USB-PD + Alt-DP support. Say goodbye to bulky bricks; power and debug with a single cable.
• Unified Memory: Onboard 16GB/32GB LPDDR5 unified memory, high bandwidth meets AI model throughput demands.

The full specifications of the Sipeed K3 series are listed below:

Hardcore Specs

SoC	SpacemiT Key Stone K3 (8x X100 + 8x A100 RISC-V Cores)
AI Performance	60 TOPS (INT4), Supports BF16/FP16/INT4
Memory (RAM)	8/16/32GB LPDDR5 @ 6400MT/s (51GB/s Bandwidth)
Storage	Supports eMMC 5.1, SD Card, M.2 NVMe SSD (PCIe Gen3 x4)
Multimedia	Decode: 4K@120fps (H.265/VP9) | Encode: 4K@60fps
OS Support	Bianbu OS (Debian based), Docker Support, RISC-V KVM Virtualization
Dimensions	103mm x 90.5mm x 35mm (with heatsink)

There's a $10 US difference between the Kit and the ITX board, but you are looking at a starting price of $299-$309 for the 8 GB SBCs and up to $629-$639 for the 32 GB configurations. Currently, NVIDIA's Jetson Orin Nano with 8 GB memory and a 6-core ARM CPU retails for $247.99. If you want a small AI machine that can handle up to 30B LLMs, then these definitely look enticing.

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