Sipeed claims MaixStation beats Nvidia DGX Spark on Qwen tasks
The Chinese firm says its under-$4,000 AI mini PC outperforms Nvidia's DGX Spark in some Qwen workloads, with a Kickstarter planned within months.
Sipeed has announced that its upcoming MaixStation AI mini PC, priced under $4,000, claims to outperform Nvidia's DGX Spark on certain Qwen workloads, according to techradar.com. The company plans a Kickstarter campaign within several months.
The MaixStation is built around Axera's AX8860P processor, which has 16 Arm Cortex-A55 cores and AI acceleration reaching 256 TOPS at roughly 40W typical consumption. The chip is made on a 6nm process and supports 256-bit LPDDR5X memory and PCIe 5.0, along with Axera's AXLink interconnect.
Sipeed's published Qwen results show its 128GB configuration slightly exceeding the DGX Spark, with further software improvements expected. The company says both machines offer 273GB/s memory bandwidth, but that its architecture sustains higher utilization during prefill. The comparisons were run with speculative decoding via multi-token prediction disabled.
Pricing is expected to land below $2,000 for the 32GB model and under $4,000 for the 128GB configuration. Sipeed says the 32GB unit supports Qwen3.8-27B and the 128GB model Qwen3.8-Flash-Next 125B; two units provide 256GB for DeepSeek V4-Flash 284B, and a four-unit MaixStation Pro gives 512GB for DeepSeek V4.1-Flash 552B. Axera claims about 80% interconnect efficiency when multiple chips run together via AXLink.
The machine measures 110 × 110 × 30 mm and offers USB 3.0 Type-C plus a 10GbE SFP+ network interface, powered through a 65W USB PD connection. Software compatibility reportedly includes PyTorch, ONNX, vLLM, SGLang and Hugging Face formats, plus OpenAI-compatible interfaces.
A $30 reservation is set to offer a $100 discount. Commercial availability, final pricing and independently verified performance remain unresolved.
Quick answers
How much will the MaixStation cost?
Sipeed expects the 32GB model to cost below $2,000 and the 128GB configuration under $4,000.
When can I buy the MaixStation?
Sipeed plans a Kickstarter campaign within several months, with a $30 reservation offering a $100 discount. Final availability and pricing are not yet confirmed.
What processor does the MaixStation use?
It uses Axera's AX8860P, a 6nm chip with 16 Arm Cortex-A55 cores and AI acceleration reaching 256 TOPS at roughly 40W typical consumption.