Introduction

The MUSE Book is a flagship device powered by an 8-core RISC-V AI-CPU M1 by SpacemiT, which provides top-tier performance, making it one of the most powerful devices in its category. The MUSE Book leverages the RISC-V architecture, which is renowned for its open-source nature and flexibility. This allows the device to be highly adaptable and future-proof, supporting both current and emerging technologies. The design significantly enhances the RISC-V architecture's capabilities, offering a robust and efficient platform.

The M1 CPU is the high performance variant of the SpacemiT K1, which is based on the RISC-V X60 architecture, delivering exceptional graphics performance. It achieves up to 2 TOPS AI performance and has a processing speed of 50K DMIPS, ensuring swift and efficient operations. The device supports advanced video processing capabilities, including 4K video formats with codecs such as H.265, H.264, VP9, and VP8, ensuring stunning visual quality. It also supports 3D graphics acceleration, OpenCL 3.0, OpenGL ES 3.2, and Vulkan 1.3, providing extensive support for a wide range of applications and ensuring excellent multimedia and gaming experiences.

Features

• A display that achieves perfect color accuracy, with 100% sRGB color gamut coverage.
• The MUSE Book's display is resistant to light and reflection, reducing glare and improving visual comfort.
• Lightweight, weighing only 1.3 KG, and thin, with a thickness of just 17.8mm.
• Supports Type-C PD 3.1 for fast charging.
• Features a 1080P high-definition camera, enhancing video quality and clarity, ideal for video calls and conferences.
• Equipped with a 38Wh battery, offering up to 8+ hours of continuous usage.
• Includes an 8-pin connector, 2.54mm pitch standard interface, supporting I2C, UART, PWM, GPIO, and JTAG functionalities, facilitating easy integration and expansion for DIY projects and developers.

This Muse Book runs the Bianbu OS operating system based on the Debian distribution and optimized to run on the SpacemiT M1 octa-core RISC-V SoC. Let’s first take a look at its external interfaces. On the left side of the laptop, there are two USB Type-C interfaces, a USB 3.0 Type-A port, a 3.5mm headphone jack, a microSD card slot, and a reset pinhole.

The 8-pin header on the right side of the laptop is quite interesting, and SpacemiT hopes the Muse Book can become one of the most convenient hardware development platforms for RISC-V.  In addition to the power pins, users will find multiplexed I2C, UART, PWM, GPIO, and other interfaces. There’s also another USB Type-A port on that side and an additional pinhole to enter USB download mode for flashing the firmware.

Muse Book IO specifications:

• Storage – eMMC + NVMe SSD 2280
•  USB
  • 1x USB Type-C port (USB 3.2 Gen 1 data transmission, PD fast charging)
  • 1x USB Type-C port (USB 3.2 Gen 1 data transmission, PD fast charging, DP video signal)
  • 2x USB 3.0 Type-A ports
• Audio – 3.5mm headphone jack
• Misc
  • Reset pinhole
  • USB start pinhole to set the USB interface to download mode
  • Expansion – 8-pin 2.54mm pitch female header with Tx/Rx (UART), 3.3V/GND, I2C, PWM, etc…

The laptop features a 14.1-inch IPS display with a resolution of 1920×1080 and a 60 Hz refresh rate, a relatively conventional configuration. It also comes with a basic touchpad and keyboard whose Windows button has been replaced by a RISC-V button.

The notebook adopts a relatively lightweight design, with a weight of 1.3kg and a thickness of approximately 18mm. A teardown of the Muse Book reveals an all-metal fanless design, indicating that SpacemiT is very confident in the heat dissipation control of the K1 SoC.

The main board features the K1 SoC, up to 16GB of LPDDR4X memory, eMMC storage, and a WiFi 6 wireless module (Fn-Link 6252C-PUB). A 36.48Wh/7.6V battery was selected for the laptop with support for USB PD 3.1 fast charging and a battery life of over 6 hours in typical conditions.

MuseBook specifications

• SoC – SpacemiT K1 octa-core X60 RISC-V core compliant with RVA22 (See SoC specifications details below)
• System memory – Up to 16GB 32bit LPDDR4-2400MT, 32bit LPDDR4X-2666MT
• Storage
  • 64GB eMMC flash (default), option up to 512GB
  • M.2 (PCIe Gen 2 2x) socket for NVMe SSD up to 1TB
  • MicroSD card slot
• Display
  • 14.1-inch IPS display with 1920×1080 resolution, 60Hz refresh rate
  • 72% NTSC (≈100%sRGB) Color gamut
  • 250 nits brightness
• Networking – RTL8852BE-based WiFi 6 module
• Power Supply – USB PD 3.1 Type-C port (65W power adapter)
• Dimensions – 322.6 x 209.2 x 17.8mm
• Weight – 1.36kg
• OS: Bianbu OS by Debian, Ubuntu, Linux
• Browser: Chromium