At a high-profile event on May 22, Xiaomi unveiled its first built in-house smartphone chipset, the Xring01, marking a milestone for the Chinese company. The deca-core chip, built on TSMC’s 3 nm node, will power the upcoming Xiaomi 15S Pro and Pad 7 Ultra, showcasing the faith the brand has in their new product.
Specs and Benchmarks
Xring01 features a novel ten-core CPU configuration, including two Arm Cortex-X4 performance cores clocked at up to 3.9 GHz, four Cortex-A720 balanced cores at 3.4 GHz, and four Cortex-A520 efficiency cores running at 1.89 GHz and 1.8 GHz respectively. The chip is manufactured on TSMC’s 3nm N3E process, offering improvements in energy efficiency and transistor density over previous 4 nm platforms. With this setup, the Xring01 should be pretty well balanced for both performance in roulette games and day-to-day usage.
Graphics duties are handled by an Imagination Technologies PowerVR GPU operating at up to 1.3 GHz, bringing historical GPU expertise from MediaTek partnerships into Xiaomi’s own design. Benchmarks reveal that Xring01 delivers multi-core and single-core scores close to Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 8 Elite, with preliminary AnTuTu results surpassing three million points, and GPU performance that remains competitive with top-tier Android SoCs. An integrated six-core neural processing unit enhances on-device AI tasks, leveraging a 16-core GPU block for machine learning workloads without tapping into cloud resources. According to Xiaomi founder Lei Jun, mass production of Xring01 started on May 20, ensuring ample supply for flagship devices at launch.
Despite its debut status, Xring01 outperforms many predecessors by implementing a first-of-its-kind ten-core layout in smartphones, a configuration that tasks each core group with optimar work distribution to extend battery life under heavy loads. The 3 nm fabrication further enables the chip to sustain high clock speeds while maintaining thermal headroom, a persistent challenge for modern mobile CPUs. While Snapdragon and Apple silicon remain the benchmarks for raw mobile performance, Xiaomi’s early demonstration shows promise as a credible alternative.
Charting a Path to Silicon Sovereignty
By developing Xring01 in-house, Xiaomi is taking a strategic step toward reducing dependence on external chip suppliers such as Qualcomm and MediaTek, a move that mirrors Apple’s and Hawei’s custom silicon strategies. Xiaomi’s ability to secure 3 nm manufacturing through TSMC gives the company a competitive edge over rivals like Huawei, whose chip ambitions have been hampered by sanctions and domestic lithography limitations.
Alongside the chip launch, Xiaomi announced a 200 billion yuan investment in core technology R&D over the next five years, underscoring the company’s commitment to semiconductor and automotive innovation alike. Within this envelope, at least 50 billion yuan is earmarked for chip design over the next decade, fueling growth in Xiaomi’s in-house engineering teams, which already total over 2.500 professionals dedicated to silicon development.
Xring01’s integration into the Xiaomi 15S Pro smartphone and Pad 7 Ultra tablet sets the stage for proprietary silicon deployment across multiple product lines, including future IoT devices and ecosystem accessories, creating a unified hardware foundation that can be finely tuned by Xiaomi’s software teams. Despite Samsung’s Exynos struggles, Xiaomi thinks that they can enter into custom SoC design and reshape Android’s hardware landscape and pressure other manufacturers to invest in bespoke silicon solutions.
