Sipeed
Sipeed Maix4-HAT
Overview
The Sipeed Maix4-HAT is a compact dual-mode single-board computer and AI accelerator module, launched in July 2025. Powered by the AXera AX650 vision SoC with 8 ARM Cortex-A55 CPU cores and a neural processing unit capable of 72 TOPS (INT4) or 18 TOPS (INT8) performance, it can be used as a standalone Linux development board or connected to a Raspberry Pi 5 via PCIe as a HAT-style AI accelerator. With 8GB LPDDR4X RAM, it runs LLMs, VLMs, speech models, and computer vision models entirely on-device. Priced at approximately $149, it is available through AliExpress.
Key Highlights
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Dual-mode operation: works as PCIe AI accelerator HAT for Raspberry Pi 5 OR as standalone LLM development board with 8-core ARM Cortex-A55 CPU
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AXera AX650 NPU delivers up to 72 TOPS (INT4) or 18 TOPS (INT8) with 8GB dedicated LPDDR4X memory for on-device AI inference
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Supports LLMs including DeepSeek-R1-Distill, Qwen3, InternVL2.5, and Qwen2.5 via Sipeed axcl library — enables local coding agents and chatbots on edge hardware
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Outperforms Hailo-8 based accelerators on computer vision models — achieves 5073 FPS on MobileNetV2 and 5961 FPS on SqueezeNet1.1
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Vision, speech, and multimodal AI support: YOLO-World, DepthAnythingV2, Whisper, MeloTTS, InternVL3, and MiniCPM models
Technical Specifications
| Brand | Sipeed |
| Model | Sipeed Maix4-HAT |
| Processor (CPU) | AXera AX650 SoC (8 Cores ARM Cortex-A55 @ 1.7 GHz) |
| Memory (RAM) | 8GB LPDDR4X Onboard |
| Storage | 1x MicroSD Card Slot (supports up to 512GB) |
| Ports & I/O |
1x USB 3.0 1x USB 2.0 OTG 1x Mini HDMI 1x MicroSD Card Slot 1x PCIe (for Raspberry Pi 5 connection) 1x I2C Header 1x SPI LCD Header 1x Cooling Fan Header 1x Speaker Header 1x Onboard Microphone 1x Reset Button Status LEDs |
| Connectivity | N/A (uses host Raspberry Pi 5 Wi-Fi/BT when used as HAT; requires USB adapter for standalone mode) |
| Operating System | Linux (Sipeed Linux image with axcl library; standalone mode) / Add-on Board for Raspberry Pi 5 (HAT mode) |
| Dimensions | 65 x 56 x 20 mm (standard Raspberry Pi HAT form factor) |