WhereIsAtlas · RISC-V
What Happened to SpacemiT MUSE?
RISC-V has been called the future of computing for a decade. A Chinese start-up put it in a $300 laptop you can actually buy — here is where that stands.
SpacemiT, a Hangzhou chip designer, builds processors on RISC-V — the open, royalty-free instruction set. Its eight-core K1 powers the MUSE Book, a RISC-V laptop priced at around US$300 and marketed as the first mass-producible machine of its kind, running a Debian-based Linux.
What RISC-V actually is, and why it matters
Almost every computer you have used runs on an instruction set owned by a company. Intel and AMD's x86 is proprietary; the processors in your phone are overwhelmingly ARM, which requires a licence. RISC-V is different: it is an open standard, free to implement, which means a chip designer anywhere can build a processor without asking permission or paying a royalty.
That is why RISC-V has been described as the future of computing for the better part of a decade. It is also why, for most of that decade, the future never quite arrived in a form an ordinary person could buy. RISC-V chips turned up in embedded devices, industrial gear and developer boards — rarely in a laptop on a shop shelf.
The company behind the laptop
SpacemiT, known in Chinese as Jindie Space-Time, is based in Hangzhou, China, and exists to close that gap. It designs RISC-V processors and, unusually, builds consumer products around them rather than selling silicon alone.
Its core part is the Key Stone K1, an eight-core RISC-V AI CPU. The company's device family is built on it: the MUSE Book laptop, the MUSE Box mini desktop, the MUSE Pi Pro developer board and the K1 MUSE Card. Tying it together is Bianbu OS, a Debian-based Linux distribution tuned for the chips.
The $300 laptop
The MUSE Book is the product that made the company known outside specialist circles. It has been priced at roughly US$300 internationally, and from around 2,399 yuan in China, and it has been marketed as the world's first mass-producible RISC-V laptop.
That phrasing is doing real work. Plenty of RISC-V laptops have existed before — but as small-batch developer machines, evaluation units and prototypes. "Mass-producible" is a claim about supply chain and availability, not just silicon. And because reviewers have now tested it as a working octa-core RISC-V Linux laptop, the machine is a product rather than a promise.
What it is actually like to use
Honest reporting on the MUSE Book lands in the same place: it works, and it is not a replacement for a mainstream laptop. It is slower than an equivalently priced x86 or ARM machine, and it runs Linux — with the usual consequence that some software works well, some works awkwardly, and some is simply missing.
That is the nature of a young architecture. The value of the MUSE Book is not that it beats a familiar laptop on performance. It is that a genuinely open architecture reached a price and a form factor that ordinary people can buy.
The architecture reaching the mainstream kernel
One of the quietest and most consequential developments is upstream support. Mainline Linux added support for SpacemiT's RISC-V CPUs, meaning the chips work with a standard kernel instead of requiring permanently bespoke patches.
For an architecture, this is the difference between being a vendor curiosity and being part of the ecosystem. Upstream support means long-term maintenance is shared, distributions can ship images, and developers no longer start from scratch.
It is not only SpacemiT
SpacemiT silicon also shows up in other companies' machines. DeepComputing's DC-ROMA Laptop II, a slightly more expensive RISC-V laptop, also uses SpacemiT processors — a small but telling sign that the company is becoming a supplier to the wider RISC-V laptop effort rather than a lone experiment.
Where SpacemiT MUSE is now
SpacemiT is an active, shipping company with a real product line, a working operating system and mainline kernel support for its chips. The MUSE Book is on sale, reviewed, and buyable.
Whether RISC-V displaces anything that matters is a separate and much longer question. What has changed is narrower and more concrete: the open architecture is no longer only a slide in a conference talk. For around three hundred dollars, you can own one.
Frequently asked questions
These are the questions people actually search for about RISC-V laptops, answered directly.
What is a RISC-V laptop?
A laptop built on RISC-V, an open, royalty-free processor instruction set that anyone may implement — unlike x86 or ARM, which are proprietary or licensed.
Is the SpacemiT MUSE Book available to buy?
Yes. It has been sold internationally at around US$300 and from roughly ¥2,399 in China, and independent reviewers have tested shipping units.
What chip does it use?
The SpacemiT Key Stone K1, an eight-core RISC-V AI CPU designed by SpacemiT itself.
Can it run Windows?
No. The MUSE Book runs Linux — SpacemiT's own Debian-based Bianbu OS — and RISC-V support for Windows is not a consumer reality.
Is RISC-V faster than Intel or ARM?
Not in this class of device. The MUSE Book is slower than comparably priced mainstream laptops. Its significance is openness and availability, not speed.
Does Linux support these chips?
Yes, and increasingly in the mainline kernel: Linux 6.14 added support for SpacemiT's RISC-V CPUs, so the chips no longer depend on out-of-tree patches.
Entries in this story
Sources
- SpacemiT - Wikipedia — Wikipedia (2026-09-15)
- MUSE Book laptop review: testing an octa-core RISC-V Linux laptop in 2026 — CNX Software (2026-09-15)
- RISC-V laptops: $299 MUSE Book and $399 DC-ROMA II with SpacemiT processors are now available — GeekChamp (2026-09-15)
- Chinese startup launching RISC-V laptop for devs and engineers priced at around $300 — Yahoo Tech (2026-09-15)
- Linux 6.14 to add support for SpacemiT's energy-efficient AI RISC-V CPUs — Phoronix (2026-09-15)