Plucky Chinese startup claims to beat Nvidia DGX Spark, Mac Mini on Qwen
says its '256 TOPS beats 1000 TOPS in prefill', running 16-core Cortex-A55
SoC on 40w

Date:
Fri, 23 Oct 2026 22:25:00 +0000

Description:
Sipeed claims its 256 TOPS MaixStation can outperform Nvidia's DGX Spark on Qwen workloads despite lower advertised computing capacity and consumption.

FULL STORY ======================================================================Copy link Facebook X Whatsapp Reddit Pinterest Flipboard Threads Email Share this article 0 Join the conversation Follow us Add us as a preferred source on Google Newsletter Subscribe to our newsletter Sipeed claims its 256 TOPS mini PC can outperform Nvidia on Qwen The 128GB Sipeed MaixStation costs less than Nvidia's reported $6,949 DGX Spark Nvidia advertises 1,000 sparse FP4 TOPS, while Sipeed emphasizes practical inference performance Chinese electronics manufacturer Sipeed has claimed its upcoming MaixStation AI computer can outperform Nvidia 's DGX Spark in certain Qwen workloads despite considerably lower advertised computing performance.

Powered by Axera's AX8860P processor, the compact machine combines 16 Arm Cortex-A55 cores with AI acceleration reaching 256 TOPS and typical consumption of 40W. Sipeed is also challenging Apple 's Mac Mini in its comparisons, although the available benchmark figures primarily concern Nvidia's system rather than Apple's hardware. Latest Videos From TechRadar Watch full video here: MaixStation challenges Nvidia's performance advantage Sipeed's published Qwen results indicate that its 128GB configuration
slightly exceeds the DGX Spark's performance, with further software improvements expected to increase throughput.

The company attributes this outcome partly to differences in how advertised computing capacity translates into actual performance when processing large language models. You may like Startup backed by the world's largest battery maker just launched a supercheap mini PC that competes with Nvidia's $5000 AI DGX Spark PC OpenAI lifts the lid on its in-house Jalapeo chip - with benchmarks claiming it beats Nvidia's GB300 16 cores, 5.2 GHz, and 55 TOPS: Minisforum's newest AI workstation is mostly a massive upgrade to 192GB of memory - and that is not necessarily a bad thing

Nvidia advertises 1,000 TOPS using sparse FP4 calculations, whereas Sipeed argues that practical workloads cannot fully exploit this theoretical computing capability.

Although Nvidia's dense FP4 performance approaches 500 TOPS theoretically, Sipeed maintains that its architecture uses available processing resources more efficiently during prefill. Are you a pro? Subscribe to our newsletter Sign up to the TechRadar Pro newsletter to get all the top news, opinion, features and guidance your business needs to succeed! Contact me with news
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Both machines offer 273GB/s memory bandwidth, although Sipeed claims architectural optimizations allow its processor to sustain higher utilization during demanding inference operations.

The comparisons were conducted with speculative decoding through multi-token prediction disabled, allowing the company to evaluate both systems under similar conditions.

However, the reported advantage remains relatively small, and independent testing would be necessary to establish performance differences across additional models and workloads. What to read next Nvidia RTX Spark vs Apple M6: which chip is better for creating, gaming, and AI? Fastest AI laptop ever built keeps its crown for now as Nvidia unleashes RTX mobile workstations $18,600 Dell Pro Max 18 Plus laptop doubled in price in 14 months, and it could be unseated within days Acers new RTX Spark mini PCs are giving me M6 Mac mini vibes: great-looking, but who is it for?

The AX8860P uses a 6nm manufacturing process, supports 256-bit LPDDR5X memory and provides PCIe 5.0 connectivity alongside Axera's proprietary AXLink interconnect.

Its specifications also include 64 video decoding channels, 16 encoding channels and support for configurations containing as much as 128GB memory. Pricing and hardware configurations Sipeed expects its entry-level
MaixStation with 32GB memory to cost below $2,000, while the 128GB configuration should remain under $4,000.

By comparison, Nvidia's DGX Spark reportedly sells for $6,949.99,
considerably above its original $3,000 to $4,000 pricing announced during March 2025.

The compact AI mini PC measures 110 110 30 mm and includes USB 3.0 Type-C connectivity alongside a 10GbE SFP+ network interface.

Although normal consumption is approximately 40W, the computer receives electricity through a 65W USB Power Delivery connection using its Type-C
port.

Sipeed claims its 32GB model supports Qwen3.8-27B, while a 128GB
configuration can accommodate the considerably larger Qwen3.8-Flash-Next 125B model.

Combining two units provides 256GB memory for DeepSeek V4-Flash 284B, while a four-unit MaixStation Pro configuration offers 512GB for DeepSeek V4.1-Flash 552B.

AXLink supports communication between processors, with Axera claiming approximately 80% interconnect efficiency when multiple chips operate within connected computing systems.

Software compatibility reportedly includes PyTorch, ONNX, vLLM, SGLang and Hugging Face formats, alongside interfaces compatible with OpenAI
applications and Axera's development tools.

The company plans a Kickstarter campaign within several months, offering prospective customers a $100 discount through a reservation costing $30.

Despite its claimed advantages, commercial availability, final pricing, and independently verified performance remain unresolved, particularly for configurations running extremely large language models .

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