Xring 01: Xiaomi's top chip on a par with Apple A18 and Snapdragon 8 Elite

Contents

Just one week after the official confirmation that Xiaomi is working on its own processors, the Xring 01 has been unveiled. On paper, the new Xiaomi chip cuts a similarly good figure as the top processors of its competitors – also in initial benchmarks.

Xring 01 is manufactured using the same process as Apple's A18

With the presentation of the processor, it is now clear that Xiaomi relies on the latest 3 nm production (N3E) from TSMC and not, as previously speculated, on an older 4 nm process. The system-on-a-chip (SoC) with 19 billion transistors has 10 CPU and 16 GPU cores.

Xiaomi uses the latest solutions from Arm for the CPU and distributes them across four clusters with prime, performance and efficiency cores: The chip consists of 2 Cortex-X925 (3.9 GHz), 4 Cortex-A725 (3.4 GHz), 2 Cortex-A725 (1.9 GHz) and 2 Cortex-A520 cores (1.8 GHz).

For the graphics unit, Xiaomi has selected the Immortalis G925, currently ARM's most powerful GPU. The graphics performance should keep pace with that of the Mediatek Dimensity top chip 9400+. Other components of the SoC include Xiaomi's fourth-generation ISP and a 6-core NPU with 44 TOPS for on-device AI processing. Xiaomi has not yet provided any concrete information on other SoC details such as image processor, display engine and modem.

In addition to the Xring 01, Xiaomi has also presented its own SoC with an integrated modem called Xring T1. However, the modem only supports 4G/LTE and not 5G. The T1 chip is only designed for use in the Xiaomi Watch S4 with eSIM anyway, the manufacturer announced.

Xring 01: Initial benchmarks indicate top performance

Xiaomi's first top processor is already being used in its first products: the Xiaomi 15S Pro smartphone and the Pad 7 Ultra tablet are initially intended for the Chinese market. Thanks to these products, however, several benchmarks have already landed on Geekbench that attest to the Xring 01's excellent performance.

According to the data on Geekbench 6, the Xring 01 achieved single values of over 3100 points and over 9600 in multi-core. This means that Xiaomi's first upper-class chip comes close to the performance values of Qualcomm's Snapdragon 8 Elite, which is slightly better in multi-core with up to 10,000 points. It should not be forgotten that Xiaomi relies on ARM's standard cores, while Qualcomm relies on its own Oryon microarchitecture.

Xiaomi remains loyal to Qualcomm despite Xring

Despite developing its own chip, Xiaomi does not want to turn its back on semiconductor developer Qualcomm. This would be a bitter blow for Qualcomm, as Xiaomi is the third largest smartphone manufacturer in the world and one of its most important customers. In addition, Xiaomi has been one of the first companies to regularly present smartphones with the latest high-end chips from Qualcomm for years.

According to the two companies, this will not change in the coming years. They have entered into a long-term partnership shortly before the announcement of the Xring 01 eine, which assures that Xiaomi will remain loyal to Qualcomm's Elite 8 processors.

(afl)