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Carrier & Campus Network Infrastructure

Gateways, routers and network appliances where operators need full-stack visibility — bootloader to application — and a supply chain that outlives a single vendor's product line.

Network operators need equipment they can audit end to end and keep in service for a decade. Closed platforms make the first impossible and the second a commercial negotiation rather than an engineering decision.

How RISC-V addresses it

Auditable stackRISC-V gateways running OpenWrt give full-stack visibility — bootloader to application — with no opaque binary blobs. Every instruction is publicly specified, so a security review has something to review.
Ecosystem maturityThe K1 has mature OpenWrt 23.05 support. That is the difference between 'RISC-V is interesting' and 'this is a drop-in target for our router build'.
Multi-source supplyThe same ISA is produced by vendors across multiple regions. When lead times or allocation shift, an alternate part can be qualified without rewriting the firmware from scratch.

Recommended parts

SpacemiT K1
Octa-core 1.6 GHz RISC-V with OpenWrt support
CPU 8x X60 RISC-V @ 1.6 GHz; Performance 50,000 DMIPS; OS support OpenWrt, Bianbu OS, Linux
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Fit assessment

Good fit for: Campus and branch gateways, SD-WAN appliances, network-attached storage, serial-to-Ethernet aggregation, OpenWrt based routers.
Check before committing: The K1 is specified with 8x X60 cores at 1.6 GHz and around 50K DMIPS. Size it against your actual throughput and feature set — a firewall rule set on a gigabit line is a different load than plain routing.

Questions

Is OpenWrt support production grade on the K1?

OpenWrt 23.05 support on the K1 is mature and is the reason the part is viable for network products at all. Check the specific features you need against the target before committing.

How long is the part available?

We commit to 10+ years of supply on the parts we distribute, with advance EOL notification. The commercial terms are on the quotation.

Tell us the deployment and the volume. We will confirm part availability, lead time and pricing.
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