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The Maia detector system is engineered for energy dispersive x‐ray fluorescence spectroscopy and elemental imaging at photon rates exceeding integrated scanning of samples for pixel transit times as small as 50μs and high definition images of pixels and real‐time processing of detected events for spectral deconvolution and online display of pure elemental images. The system developed by CSIRO and BNL combines a planar silicon 384 detector array, application‐specific integrated circuits for pulse shaping and peak detection and sampling and optical data transmission to an FPGA‐based pipelined, parallel processor. This paper describes the system and the underpinning engineering solutions.