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

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.