CNX Software reported on October 19, 2026, that Axera founder and CEO Dr. Qiu Xiaoxin had unveiled the AX8860/AX8860P at the China International Industrial Fair a few days earlier. The chip’s practical comparison with NVIDIA DGX Spark runs through Sipeed’s MaixStation, a complete system that Sipeed benchmarks against the complete Spark. CNX Software reported the unveiling.
The AX8860P is a chip; MaixStation is the system Sipeed benchmarks
CNX describes the AX8860P as a 16-core Arm Cortex-A55 system-on-chip (SoC), with up to 128 TOPS of AI throughput, or up to 256 TOPS using FP4. It reports support for up to 128GB of 256-bit LPDDR5x memory, with bandwidth of 273GB/s, as well as PCIe 5.0 and AXLink chip-to-chip cascading. These are reported chip specifications; the Qwen results below compare complete systems, not the AX8860P by itself with a computer.
Sipeed’s two Qwen comparisons
Sipeed’s MaixStation product page lists results for two Qwen models in FP4 with MTP disabled. Prefill measures processing the input prompt; decode measures generating output tokens. Sipeed reports these speeds in tokens per second:
| Model and mode | Metric | NVIDIA DGX Spark | Sipeed MaixStation (128GB) |
| Qwen3.8-27B, dense FP4 | Prefill | 1,300 tok/s | 1,400–1,600 tok/s |
| Qwen3.8-27B, dense FP4 | Decode | 13 tok/s | 15–17 tok/s |
| Qwen3.6-35B-A3B, MoE FP4 | Prefill | 5,600 tok/s | 6,300–7,700 tok/s |
| Qwen3.6-35B-A3B, MoE FP4 | Decode | 80 tok/s | 80–88 tok/s |
Prefill and decode describe different parts of inference, so the useful number depends on the task: prompt processing or output generation. For Qwen3.6-35B-A3B, the listed decode ranges meet at 80 tok/s; the table’s other MaixStation figures are higher than the corresponding Spark values. The results are Sipeed’s comparisons for these two Qwen models and stated settings.
For background, see NeoTeo’s earlier coverage of Sipeed’s MaixStation performance claims.
What Axera’s software guide covers
Axera’s Pulsar2 documentation walks through compiling an ONNX MobileNetV2 model into an axmodel for AX8860. Running the model on an AX8860 board requires the corresponding SDK, AXEngine runtime and board image, according to the AX8860 guide.
Sipeed’s Kickstarter plan
Sipeed says it plans a Kickstarter campaign for MaixStation at the end of 2026.
