Xiaomi recently launched its first SoC, the central chip for a smartphone, designed internally, the XRing01. It has just been incorporated into two products, a smartphone and a tablet, the Xiaomi 15S Pro and the Xiaomi Pad 7 Ultra, during an event with a very evocative name: "A New Beginning". Xiaomi is indeed the fourth brand to embark on this adventure after around ten years of development. This represents an important step.
To be cautious, the brand is starting slowly with devices that are not at all strategic. We are neither dealing with a Redmi Note, which accounts for a good portion of sales for Xiaomi, nor with a main flagship like the Xiaomi 15 Ultra, nor with a smartphone from the T range, like the Xiaomi 14T, which achieves respectable sales.
Aside from this originality, the two products are resolutely classic. The Xiaomi15S Pro is based on the capabilities of the Xiaomi15 Pro.
A chip that could compete with the best
Let's quickly paint a picture of it. Contrary to what had been suggested, the new chip, presented in a full blog post, is engraved in 3nm. This puts it in the race with the best chips of the moment.
It is structured as follows: 10 CPU cores, 16 GPU cores, an in-house ISP (a chip specialized in image processing) and a neural engine specialized in AI with 6 cores. Xiaomi specifies that the chip is "launched first on the Chinese domestic market", without further details for the rest of the world. The CPU is structured around two Cortex-X925 cores clocked at 3.9GHz, six Cortex-A725 cores ranging from 3.4GHz to 1.9GHz, and two Cortex-A520 cores at 1.8GHz.
All of this allows Xiaomi to obtain, according to them, 3 million points on the AnTuTu benchmark tool and nearly 3,000 points on Geekbench6 in single-core. Translating all this into French: if the figures put forward are not faked, Xiaomi is not at all ridiculous in the race for power and is very close to the best in the sector.
A massive investment
The brand also took the opportunity to launch its first SoC specialized in smartwatches and capable of handling 4G, called Xiaomi XRING T14G. It will be integrated into the Xiaomi Watch S4 Anniversary Edition.
Because yes, Xiaomi is celebrating its 15th anniversary and therefore wants to mark the occasion with this crucial stage of its development. The company claims to have spent 13.5 billion yuan on research and development, or 1.65 billion euros. It would then plan an investment of 50 billion yuan over the next decade, or 6.12 billion euros, all supported by a team of 2,500 engineers. To give you an idea, Qualcomm, one of the market leaders, spends nearly 9 billion dollars per year on its R&D. But Qualcomm covers a very broad spectrum, from entry-level to the most premium products. The San Diego-based firm not only designs chips for smartphones and watches, but also for computers, cars, headsets, and AR glasses.
Moreover, this venture into the field of in-house SoCs does not mean that Xiaomi is cutting ties with Qualcomm, quite the contrary. As the American company recalled in a recent press release, the two firms have just renewed their partnership. It reads: "Xiaomi's high-end smartphones will continue to be powered by the industry-leading Snapdragon 8-series processors across multiple product generations. Later this year, Xiaomi will be one of the first manufacturers to adopt the next generation of premium Snapdragon 8-series." In short, for the most expensive and image-important smartphones, Xiaomi is not yet ready to take the risk.
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