Sipeed reveals Chinese-made DGX Spark and Ryzen AI Halo rival, expected to cost $3,999

A Chinese rival to the DGX Spark and the Ryzen AI Halo, at least on paper, has emerged with Sipeed’s announcement of the MaixStation. The system, built on Axera’s new AX8860P, is in the same memory class with 128GB of LPDDR5X on a 256-bit bus at 273 GB/s. Sipeed told Tom’s Hardware Premium it expects the 128GB model to cost around $3,999, with launch discounts on Kickstarter, putting it level with the 128GB Ryzen AI Halo and well under the DGX Spark’s current MSRP of $6,950. Sign-ups are open now on Sipeed’s MaixStation page ahead of a Kickstarter campaign at the end of the year, with units shipping within three months after it closes. The NPU toolchain is due by the end of this month.

The AX8860P is a 16-core Arm Cortex-A55 part with an in-house NPU rated at 256 TOPS at native FP4 with no sparsity. The chip is produced in the 6nm process, Axera says. …