Arm Flexes 15-Year Partnership With Xiaomi In Chip Challenge To Apple
In a bold (unofficial) declaration, Chinese smartphone giant Xiaomi and semiconductor designer ARM have thrown down the gauntlet against Apple's formidable A-series processors with the upcoming Xring O1 processor. With the Xring O1, Xiaomi promises top-tier performance at a potentially more accessible price point, marking a significant landmark for the company.
At a launch event this week, Xiaomi CEO and founder Lei Jun, showcased the all-new Xring O1 processor as the brain behind the new flagship Xiaomi 15S Pro smartphone and the Xiaomi Pad 7 Ultra tablet. With these releases, Xiaomi showed that it was serious on being free and independent from external suppliers like Qualcomm and assert greater control over its product ecosystem.
At a launch event this week, Xiaomi CEO and founder Lei Jun, showcased the all-new Xring O1 processor as the brain behind the new flagship Xiaomi 15S Pro smartphone and the Xiaomi Pad 7 Ultra tablet. With these releases, Xiaomi showed that it was serious on being free and independent from external suppliers like Qualcomm and assert greater control over its product ecosystem.
Xring O1 co-developer ARM also praised the milestone, calling attention to its 15-year relationship with the Chinese company.
Built on TSMC's second-generation 3 nm process technology, the Xring O1 boasts an impressive 10-core CPU architecture, featuring two high-performance Arm Cortex-X925 cores, six Cortex-A725 cores, and two Cortex-A520 cores. Complementing this is a 16-core Arm Immortalis-G925 GPU and a 6-core Neural Processing Unit (NPU) capable of up to 44 TOPS.
Based on controlled testing, the chipset's AnTuTu V10 score exceeds 3 million points, which if accurate, means that Xring O1 even surpasses Qualcomm's Snapdragon 8 Elite and beats Apple's A18 Pro chip on certain metrics. Of course, factory claims should be taken with a grain of salt. Independent Antutu scores, for example, have shown scores hovering closer to the 2.6 million mark. The chip (using a Xiaomi 15S Pro) was found to under-perform versus the Snapdragon 8 Elite and Dimensity 9400, likely due to ambient temperatures being higher in the independant testing.
Nonetheless, at the very least, the Xring O1 initially seems competitive with other mobile platforms. The company has reportedly invested $1.87 billion (13.5 billion yuan) in R&D for the chipset and has pledged another $6.9 billion (50 billion yuan) over the next decade towards semiconductor development.
Nonetheless, at the very least, the Xring O1 initially seems competitive with other mobile platforms. The company has reportedly invested $1.87 billion (13.5 billion yuan) in R&D for the chipset and has pledged another $6.9 billion (50 billion yuan) over the next decade towards semiconductor development.
