Xring01: Xiaomi now relies on its own smartphone processors

The Chinese technology group Xiaomi has announced that it will launch a new smartphone chip developed in-house, the Xring01, at the end of May. The processor is intended to power the company's own top-of-the-range smartphone.

The announcement was made by Xiaomi CEO Lei Jun on the Chinese microblogging service Weibo. He did not provide any further details – but some details have already been leaked.

Xiaomi Xring 01 allegedly not quite at the current high-end level

As the Reuters news agency claims to have learned from insider sources, Xiaomi is said to have set up an internal chip design unit. However, at least at the start, it is said to use standard ARM designs, including the Cortex-X925. The reports are contradictory when it comes to the chip manufacturing process: Reuter speaks of a 3-nanometer process from global market leader TSMC, while other fairly well-known leakers such as Whylab and Jukanlosreve bring an older 4-nm process into play. In order to keep up with the competition in terms of efficiency, a 3 nm process would probably be necessary.

According to the leaks, the processor allegedly has a 1+3+4 layout consisting of a powerful Cortex X925 core with a peak clock frequency of 3.2 GHz, three Cortex-A725 cores with 2.6 GHz and four compact Cortex-A520 cores with 2.0 GHz. On the graphics side, the system-on-chip (SoC) is said to be equipped with an Imagination Technologies GPU of the type IMG-DXT72, which is clocked at 1.3 GHz. If the leaker Fixfokus is to be believed, the graphics unit could outperform Qualcomm's Adreno 740 of the Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 from 2023.

In general, the Xiaomi chip would be slightly weaker in terms of performance than current top SoCs such as Qualcomm's Snapdragon 8 Elite and Mediatek's Dimensity 9400(+). Google's current Tensor G4 chip also does not come close to the fastest processors from Qualcomm and Mediatek in terms of CPU and GPU performance.

Rumor has it that the Chinese manufacturer could introduce the Xring01 with the Xiaomi 15s, which is initially only intended for the Chinese market.

Xiaomi has been working on its own chips for 10 years

Xiaomi is no newcomer when it comes to chip development: the world's third-largest smartphone manufacturer started developing its own chips back in 2014 and launched its first own mobile processor, the Surge S1, which was manufactured using the 28 nm process and celebrated its premiere in the budget model Xiaomi 5C.

The manufacturer discontinued SoC development around 2019 due to excessive costs and initially focused on less complex chips such as image sensors and power management circuits (PMICs). The company resumed the development of smartphone processors as early as 2021, according to the Reuters source.

By re-entering the SoC sector, Xiaomi is ultimately following Apple and Google. The iPhone manufacturer began developing its own ARM chips back in 2010 and relies on its own CPU architectures under an ARM license. Google has been building its Tensor chips for Pixel smartphones for four generations with the help of Samsung, which are based on ARM's standard architecture combined with its own AI unit. Samsung and Huawei also build their own processors.

(afl)