Xiaomi has gone beyond making just smartphones to entering into processor innovation. This week, the company will launch the XRING 01, its first high-end chip designed entirely in-house.
Built on TSMC’s second-generation 3nm process and powered by ARM’s architecture, this new silicon is a huge attempt to compete with giants like Qualcomm, Samsung, and Apple.
We’re looking at a chip that took four years to build, backed by a research budget of $13.5 billion and a team of over 2,500 engineers.
This is not the first time Xiaomi has attempted chipmaking. In 2017, the company launched the Surge S1, an entry-level processor that vanished without a successor. But this time, Xiaomi is not playing safe. The XRING 01 is built to triumph.
Early leaked benchmarks reveal that the XRING 01 may have already pulled ahead of Samsung’s fastest chip to date—the Exynos 2400. It reportedly scores 3,119 on Geekbench’s single-core test and 9,673 on the multi-core test.
That puts it in direct competition with Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 8 Elite. For context, the Exynos 2400 was a 4nm chip. The XRING 01 is a 3nm beast with over 19 billion transistors, meaning Xiaomi has leapfrogged the South Korean tech giant in both process node and raw performance.
Xiaomi CEO Lei Jun, during the announcement, said: “We firmly believe in the long-term value of deep technology investment, and the XRING 01 is proof of our commitment.”
The CPU layout is complex but calculated. According to leaked specs, the XRING 01 carries ten cores, two Cortex-X925 cores clocked at 3.9 GHz, four Cortex-A725/X4 at 3.4 GHz, two Cortex-A720/A725 at 1.89 GHz, and two energy-efficient Cortex-A520 cores at 1.8 GHz. Xiaomi appears to be targeting performance and power efficiency in equal measure.
Built on Arm’s Immortalis G925 architecture, the XRING 01 likely includes the G925-MC16—a 16-core GPU setup that brings roughly 33% more graphical power than its 12-core predecessor used in the Dimensity 9400.
It’s a conscious move to support more demanding mobile gaming, high-resolution video processing, and perhaps future AI capabilities on-device.
The chip will debut in the upcoming Xiaomi 15S Pro. This device is expected to feature 16GB of RAM, ultra-wideband (UWB) capabilities, and 90W fast charging. It will likely be announced alongside other Xiaomi products, including the Xiaomi Pad 7 Ultra and the YU7 electric SUV, during the company’s 15th-anniversary event on May 22.
Xiaomi’s vision stretches beyond handsets. With XRING 01, it’s working to gain control of the full tech stack, something only a few companies like Apple and Huawei have successfully done.
