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⇱ RISC-V CPU Performance Up 8x In Five Years: SiFive HiFive Unmatched To SpacemiT K3 - Phoronix


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RISC-V CPU Performance Up 8x In Five Years: SiFive HiFive Unmatched To SpacemiT K3

Written by Michael Larabel in Processors on 9 June 2026 at 10:12 AM EDT. Page 6 of 6. 28 Comments.

With all of the workloads tested spanning many different domains, the SpacemiT K3 showed the terrific evolution of RISC-V performance over the past five years compared to the once popular SiFive HiFive Unmatched.

A dramatic difference even in the Python scripting performance on RISC-V.

On a geo mean basis, the SpacemiT K3 Pico-ITX was over 8x the performance of the HiFive Unmatched with its SiFive FU740 SoC. Even with the great gains, as shown in the prior K3 benchmarks the K3 typically still trailed the Raspberry Pi 5, Loongson, and current Intel/AMD desktop CPUs in raw performance. So there still is much more work needed on both the software and hardware side for making RISC-V more competitive, but nevertheless was exciting to quantify the RISC-V core hardware gains over the past five years.

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Michael Larabel is the principal author of Phoronix.com and founded the site in 2004 with a focus on enriching the Linux hardware experience. Michael has written more than 20,000 articles covering the state of Linux hardware support, Linux performance, graphics drivers, and other topics. Michael is also the lead developer of the Phoronix Test Suite, Phoromatic, and OpenBenchmarking.org automated benchmarking software. He can be followed via Twitter, LinkedIn, or contacted via MichaelLarabel.com.