Sipeed unveils MaixStation with Axera AX8860P as a DGX Spark alternative
Chinese company Sipeed has announced the MaixStation workstation for AI workloads using the Axera AX8860P processor. The company expects a $3,999 Kickstarter starting price and claims an advantage over DGX Spark in some tests.
Image: itc.ua · Author: \u041e\u043b\u0435\u043a\u0441\u0430\u043d\u0434\u0440 \u0424\u0435\u0434\u043e\u0442\u043a\u0456\u043d · source articleEditorial excerpt for news reporting
Chinese manufacturer Sipeed has unveiled the MaixStation workstation, positioning it as its own alternative to Nvidia’s DGX Spark and Ryzen AI Halo systems. The device was shown at an industrial exhibition in Shanghai, and the company has already opened preorders on its MaixStation page.
The system will use the Axera AX8860P, a 16-core Arm Cortex-A55 processor with an NPU rated at 256 TOPS FP4. Axera says the chip is manufactured using a 6nm process.
Memory and claimed performance
MaixStation can be configured with up to 128GB of LPDDR5X on a 256-bit bus. Its stated memory bandwidth is 273GB/s, while the NPU will handle most of the workload when models are running.
Sipeed claims that, with a 27-billion-parameter Qwen model, the system delivers 25% faster prefill and 30% faster decoding than DGX Spark. In another statement, the company described its advantage as roughly 10%, so the reported figures depend on the specific comparison.
Price and software support
Sipeed expects a $3,999 starting price for MaixStation on Kickstarter. That matches the price cited for Ryzen AI Halo devices with up to 128GB of memory, while remaining below the $6,950 figure given for DGX Spark.
The system will run Debian 13 and Linux 6.18. Listed software support includes vLLM, SGLang, PyTorch, ONNX, Hugging Face models and an OpenAI-compatible API. Sipeed also says MaixStation will later support Qwen 3.8-27B on a single node.
What we know
- Sipeed has introduced the MaixStation AI workstation based on the Axera AX8860P processor.
- The system supports up to 128GB of LPDDR5X memory with 273GB/s bandwidth.
- The expected Kickstarter starting price is $3,999.
- The company claims faster Qwen prefill and decoding than DGX Spark in its comparisons.
Trust: Single source
- The story relies on one publisher. A second independent confirmation has not been established from the cited sources.
- Sources: ITC.ua.
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