Maix4 doubles as Raspberry Pi 5 expansion module and stand-alone development board

The Maix4-HAT is a rather unusual system, which, as the name HAT suggests, can be used either as an expansion board for a Raspberry Pi or as a stand-alone system. An AX650 chip is installed, which provides INT4 performance of 72 TOPS and is reportedly capable of delivering 18 TOPS at INT8. The 56 x 65 millimeter board is said to be able to accelerate a wide range of AI-related applications, including (special) DeepSeek models as well as Qwen3. According to the manufacturer, the system cannot be used to accelerate LLMs. Instead, it can be used for image content analysis, such as automated object recognition in a surveillance camera.

The board is equipped with eight A55 processor cores, each running at up to 1.7 GHz, and 8 GB of RAM. A USB 3.0 port is available for connecting other devices, and there are also I2C ports on the underside of the board, as well as an SPI port for a monitor. The PCIe connection, which is used to connect to a Raspberry Pi, is located on the back. There are also connectors for a fan and speakers, as well as HDMI port in mini format.

The price given by Sipeed is HK$ 1,174.21 (approximately $149) on AliExpress, but it currently appears to be unavailable at the time of writing.