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Romu: an RP2354A that lives inside a USB port
Romu from Bitmerse is a 15.5 x 12 mm board that plugs straight into a USB-A port, in the style of the tiny "-omu" boards. Its job is USB application development: custom HID devices, USB gadgets, and security or automation keys that disappear into a laptop.
Inside is Raspberry Pi's RP2354A. It has two Arm Cortex-M33 cores and two Hazard3 RISC-V cores, all at 150 MHz, and you can run either pair. The chip also packs 520 KB of SRAM and 2 MB of stacked flash. There is no GPIO at all. You get native USB 2.0 Full-Speed, a capacitive touch button, an RGB LED, a boot button and SWD and UART test points. MicroPython comes preloaded.
Pledge | Price |
|---|---|
Romu | $40 |
Romu 3-pack | $90 |
Romu with programming and debugging jig | $65 |
Romu 3-pack with jig | $115 |
The optional jig breaks the test points out to USB-C and a standard 20-pin JTAG header. Shipping is $8 in the US and $18 elsewhere. The campaign has a $5,000 goal, runs until November 26, 2026 and lists an April 26, 2027 ship date.
Bitmerse calls Romu open hardware. It says schematics, PCB files, the BoM, STL files and example scripts will go up on GitHub before units ship. No license is named yet. CNX Software also noted that the pricing is high for what is on the board. What you pay for here is the form factor.
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VIEWE's 4.3-inch board is an early way into the ESP32-S31
The ESP32-S31 is Espressif's newest RISC-V chip, and Espressif has already shown a Linux BSP preview for it. VIEWE's 4.3-inch HMI board is, per CNX Software, apparently the first third-party board built on the chip. At $38.99 it's a complete touchscreen device, not a bare module.
Part | Spec |
|---|---|
Module | ESP32-S31-WROOM-3-N16R16V |
CPU | RISC-V HP core up to 320 MHz (RV32IMAFCP, FPU and SIMD), plus a low-power RISC-V core |
Memory | 512 KB SRAM, 16 MB PSRAM, 16 MB flash |
Display | 4.3-inch IPS, 800 x 480, 400 cd/m², 24-bit RGB, GT911 capacitive touch |
Wireless | Wi-Fi 6 (2.4 GHz), Bluetooth 5.4 with LE Audio, 802.15.4 (Thread, Zigbee, Matter) |
Audio | ES8389 stereo codec, two NS4150B amplifiers, two microphones |
I/O | USB 2.0 High-Speed OTG (Type-A), microSD, RS485 and CAN terminal block, 2x10 GPIO header |
Price | $38.99, in stock on VIEWE's store |
The RS485 and CAN block points at industrial panels, while the codec and dual microphones suit voice and smart-speaker projects. VIEWE publishes ESP-IDF examples and an LVGL demo UI on GitHub.
This is still early silicon. You need ESP-IDF master with a preview flag to build for the chip. VIEWE's own page also contradicts itself on the CPU: the description says dual-core at 320 MHz, the spec table says 400 MHz, and CNX describes one high-performance core plus a low-power core. The CAN transceiver isn't named, so don't assume CAN-FD.
Ubuntu 26.10 brings the first official RISC-V desktop images
Ubuntu 26.10 "Stonking Stingray" came out on October 15, 2026, and its release announcement lists "new RISC-V desktop images." Ubuntu has offered RISC-V server images for years. Until now, though, any company selling a RISC-V machine with an Ubuntu desktop had to build and host its own images.
There are two ISOs:
A standard Ubuntu Desktop image with GNOME
An unofficial Xubuntu Minimal image with Xfce. Canonical recommends it for QEMU, because GNOME can take 30 minutes or more to start under emulation.
The reference hardware is the SpacemiT K3. Canonical's announcement post shows the desktop running on a K3 Pico-ITX board, and there is an official K3 install guide. The images target RVA23-class hardware, the RISC-V profile modern Ubuntu now requires. That requirement is still the catch: few shipping boards meet RVA23.
On the kernel side, a Qualcomm engineer's patches would let Linux report RVA23 support directly in hwprobe and /proc/cpuinfo, instead of making software check each extension. Much of that series is queued for Linux 7.4. The part that reports the RVA23U64 bit still needs more review, though.
Treat this as a first step. In the week before release, Canonical called both ISOs experimental with no official support yet, and some desktop snaps, including the App Center, aren't ready for RISC-V. The 26.04.1 LTS RISC-V desktop image doesn't support the K3 yet.