Xiaomi Confirms XRING 01 Chipset, Launching in Late May

Xiaomi has officially entered the smartphone chipset game after years of speculation and leaks. The company has confirmed that the first in-house-produced chip, called XRING 01, will be released at the end of May. The announcement was pushed forth by Xiaomi’s chief co-founder and CEO, Lei Jun, and took place in an end-of-the-year post on Weibo.

Xiaomi Unveils XRING 01 Chipset After 10 Years of Development, Set to Launch with Xiaomi 15s in May

The XRING 01 has been in the works for 10 years and will be a significant achievement for the company. With that, Xiaomi becomes the fourth smartphone maker in the world — and the second in China — to have its own mobile System-on-Chip (SoC). Although official technical details are not known, famous tipster Digital Chat Station has posted some of the key specs online. The new chip is said to be produced using TSMC’s N4P 4nm process, so it’ll probably be more about power and performance.

The CPU setup is said to follow a 1+3+4 architecture, with a Cortex-X925 performance core clocked at 3.2GHz, three Cortex-A725 cores at 2.6GHz, and four Cortex-A520 efficiency cores at 2.0GHz. On the graphics side, the XRING 01 could feature an IMG DXT72 GPU by Imagination Technologies, clocked at 1.3GHz, and could even outperform the Adreno 740 GPU in the Snapdragon 8 Gen 2. While it will have a tough time against chips like the Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 Elite or Dimensity 9400, the XRING 01 seems to aim for the high-end flagship space with some competitive, strong performance.

Beyond brute strength, it is about strategic independence. Xiaomi has historically used Qualcomm and MediaTek chips; however, a custom SoC enables better integration between software and hardware. If this takes place, it might allow Xiaomi to better fine-tune the user experience, and lessen the reliance it has on third-party silicon, following the same journey as Huawei, Google and Samsung. Rumors suggest that the XRING 01 will make its debut with the Xiaomi 15s, likely giving us our first real-world look at what Xiaomi’s in-house chip can deliver.

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