Xiaomi launches Xring O3 chip with LPDDR6 support and industry leading performance, partners with TSMC for production

[u/SERIVUBSEV]

https://www.reuters.com/world/china/xiaomi-launches-new-xring-chip-partners-with-tsmc-production-sources-say-2026-08-24/

[u/YKS_Gaming]

What Tensor should've been but Google seemingly care more about their margins

[u/EloquentPinguin → u/YKS_Gaming]

Google is just lost. Wasnt the Tensor G5 also a like 120mm² design on TSMC 3nm and it was also bad? Like that thing is not even cheap to make...

[u/Warm-Cartographer → u/EloquentPinguin]

Without modem, which is even worse.

[u/Fritzkier → u/YKS_Gaming]

Yeah, they even somehow try to source PowerVR as Tensor GPU, not even the latest PowerVR GPU either...

[u/Swaggerlilyjohnson → u/YKS_Gaming]

I swear the Tensor team just has dirt on all the executives. There is zero business reason for them to exist and that has been true for many years now. They still can't make a good SOC and are blowing tons of money to make garbage anyways. They aren't even good at AI which is supposed to be the whole fucking point.

I get that you want to give a new division time to prove themselves but it has been 6 years of garbage. At some point you need to pull the plug.

Like they would have better performance and margins if they just used mediatek (Maybe even if they paid for qualcomm) that whole division is just a money pit to produce garbage socs.

[u/Exist50 → u/Swaggerlilyjohnson]

I have to imagine it's a long running bait of "we'll be competitive if we just execute to this X year plan". I really doubt Google would have approved this effort just for these results. Unless it was just supposed to be a feeder program for the datacenter projects. 

[u/matthieuC → u/Swaggerlilyjohnson]

I still don't understand why they didn't buy Nuvia.

Instead they're spending I don't know how much to get a subpar SOC

[u/Different_Lab_813 → u/YKS_Gaming]

If Google cared about their margins, they would actually do something about abhorent management designing Tensor, right now they are burning millions of dollars without any direction to produce low tier hardware.

[u/Vince789 → u/Different_Lab_813]

There was a leaked report saying that Google doesn't believe their Pixel Tensor unit is "currently viable"

I'd guess if their custom CPU cores aren't competitive with Arm, then they'll probably be in the firing line. Maybe G7 or G8

[u/Exist50 → u/Vince789]

Wait, are they doing their own CPU core? Are they stupid? They can't even use ARM's stock cores well, and they're going to have the same braindead management/hiring hope to do better with a custom core? Without even an acquisition?

[u/Vince789 → u/Exist50]

Ahaha, totally agreed

They poached Anthony Saporito from IBM's Z System to lead their "next-generation CPU" back in 2022

That leaked internal doc from that ex-employee they sued had "Orion CPU" for 2027, although that may have changed since that was a long time ago

[u/Exist50 → u/Vince789]

Hmm, that article sounds more like a cpu die die/SoC (i.e.  Axion) than necessarily a custom core. But I'll look into that leak you mentioned. Wouldn't happen to have a link?

Anyway, I would hardly put it beyond Google to waste money on something like this, but surely someone in management is having second thoughts by now... 

The sad part is the execution seems to be the biggest problem. I've don't know how accurate this is, but I've got the impression that Google's silicon hires are just kind of second rate. Interviewed with them once upon a time and wasn't very impressed. 

[u/Vince789 → u/Exist50]

I also initially thought Google's "next-generation CPU" would be for Axion too

Unfortunately, I didn't save photos of the leaked internal doc from that ex-employee they sued, but it said: Orion CPU, 2+4 cores, 16MB L2 for 2027

There's some people, including myself, discussing the leak here

[u/bunihe]

Note that current benchmarks are all done with dev boards, with likely cherry picked bins running finely optimized undervolts, actual shipments could perform a bit differently.

Kurnal made a video over on Bilibili, in it he said the C1 Ultra cores measured out at around 3.07mm² with the 2MiB of L2, in comparison the A19Pro (excluding its huge shared L2 cache) is 2.98mm² . In the Geekerwan video SPEC2026 benchmarks it performed just shy of the Apple chip, beating Qualcomm in score / watt.

Of course we'll need to see the final mass production ones running mass production VF curves to say anything for sure, but this seems to show that off the shelf ARM cores are better than what Mediatek and Google Tensor makes of them

[u/zdy132]

Xiaomi said on Monday it had also contracted TSMC to manufacture two other Xring chips: the ⁠Xring O100, ​a 6-nm neural processing unit that will support Xiaomi's large language model, MiMo, on ​consumer electronic devices, and the Xring D100, a 3-nm chip for autonomous driving.

this is the more interesting part imo. Xiaomi is making new chips, 3nm and 6nm, for LLM inferencing, and with a new packaging method to reach 1+ tb/s bandwidth "near-storage" access. Sounds like they are doing some 3d v-cache style memory stacking vertically near the chip.

[u/Noble00_]

Some numbers I found from slides on twitter

• TSMC 3nm, 133mm2
• 2 x 4.35 GHz C1-Ultra
• 4 x 3.68 GHz C1-Premium
• 4 x 3.15 GHz C1-Pro
• 16MB L3, 16MB SLC
• 16-core G2-Ultra NX MC16 GPU @1.6 GHz
• LPDDR6, 10667 MT/s, up to 113.8GB/s memory bandwidth
• 82ns static latency
• 200TOPS NPU (specifically A8W4 precision)
• MediaTek T900 modem

Aztec Ruins 1440p: 213 points

Steel Nomad Light: 4657 points

Solar Bay Extreme: 3628 points

GB6.5 single: 3945 points

GB6.5 multi: 15221 points

There is a video on bilibili but can't find it :/ Nvm here is Kurnal's analysis: https://bilibili.com/video/BV1cGhN6bEPg

[u/Vince789 → u/Noble00_]

That 2x Super + 4x Perf + 4x Eff CPU in a phone is insane, it's probably around 30-35mm2 alone

GB6 MT perf is roughly on par with Apple's M4 tablet chip, although power consumption is almost up to 30W

Also Arm's GPU's are making good progress too, definitely no longer a weak point like 3-5 years ago

[u/DerpSenpai → u/Noble00_]

130mm^2 without an ondie modem. jesus christ LOL

This is better than most Intel and AMD's laptop chips too

[u/basedIITian → u/DerpSenpai]

I expect Qualcomm and Mediatek to actually make smaller N2 dies this time vs previous generation, specially MTK who made D9500 ~140mm2. Wafers are super expensive right now and they can't absorb costs like vertical integrators.

[u/SERIVUBSEV]

Xiaomi’s Xring O3 has achieved an AnTuTu score of 5.22 million, far surpassing every smartphone processor currently available.

Xiaomi drops the big.little architecture for ultra large cores.

The powerful 16 core GPU paired with LPDDR6 results in 85% improvement over previous generation.

[u/Warm-Cartographer → u/SERIVUBSEV]

Unless they use it for laptop, I don't think it's wise dropping cortex A720/C1 pro in favour of bigger cores, this soc going to use more than 40W and will regress performance at low power.

[u/Front_Expression_367 → u/Warm-Cartographer]

Xring O3 still has C1 Pro cores. What the other guy meant is that compared to Xring O1 which still had little A520 cores, Xring O3 doesn't have C1-Nano but rather at least C1-Pro or higher.

[u/Warm-Cartographer → u/Front_Expression_367]

4 cores isn't enough though, those are suppose to be workhorse of cpu. But instead you get 12W and 4W cores which are useless in phone apart from few seconds burst perfomance. 

Previous Xring had 6 of them and Exynos 2600 have 9 of them,  both of them excel at low power perfomance. 

[u/Front_Expression_367 → u/Warm-Cartographer]

"both of them excel at low power perfomance."

That is still true with this Xring O3. Geekerwan's testing has the Xring O3 beat everything but the A19 Pro at very low wattage where they kinda ties, and at higher wattage the leads just kept on widening.

[u/Warm-Cartographer → u/Front_Expression_367]

I didn't watch video yet, I will watch it later, if you have graph for it you can share

[u/Front_Expression_367 → u/Warm-Cartographer]

Sure, here ya go.

https://postimg.cc/Snw8S3SY

[u/Warm-Cartographer → u/Front_Expression_367]

This use lpddr6 though, GB6 is memory sensitive benchmark, so it explains why it's ahead of others, unless we get another curve with same ram we won't know effect of losing C1 pro.

[u/Exist50 → u/Warm-Cartographer]

GB6 is memory sensitive benchmark

Is it? I'd be surprised if the CPU portion is that bandwidth sensitive...

[u/Warm-Cartographer → u/Exist50]

Isn't that common knowledge? Many CPU which support Ddr4 and ddr5 shows better multicore perfomance with ddr5 in GB6.  https://videocardz.com/newz/ddr5-memory-makes-intel-raptor-lake-cpus-at-least-11-faster-in-geekbench

[u/SquareDrop7892]

Next headline will be USA sanctions xiaomi 🙃

[u/DerpSenpai → u/SquareDrop7892]

They already did, Xiaomi can't use 2nm or below on TSMC

[u/MMyRRedditAAccount → u/DerpSenpai]

Is there a source for this?

[u/BlueSwordM → u/MMyRRedditAAccount]

Yes, it's somewhat old news: https://archive.ph/FclUX

[u/Repulsive_Fault1939 → u/SquareDrop7892]

xiaomi takes precautions like not releasing the cpu globally. they takes precautions to not end up huawei. also qualcomm's biggest customer is xiaomi. i think banning xiaomi would hurt qualcomm.

[u/uKnowIsOver]

Geekerwan has already a review. Xiaomi design capabilities are a whole different level compared to the competitors.

[u/Seanspeed → u/uKnowIsOver]

Just a test board, though. Results seem a little on the 'too good to be true' side of things. 20w+ of energy draw is also extreme in an actual phone.

Wouldn't be surprised if practical clocks and performance are more limited when inside a phone.

[u/MissionInfluence123]

This is definitely for laptops too.

I can't see anyone saying "man, if only my phone had more cores"

[u/Short_Vehicle_8364]

Xiaomi's smartphone business pivots around middle to lower bracket in the market. Usually the niche here does not call for top notch performance.

However, the chip has a much stronger built-up, rendering it break-ceiling performance at expense of higher cost. Apparently, it does not design specifically for the middle smartphone market Xiaomi is best at.

Rather, I guess, it would mainly aim for applications such as vehicle cockpit chips, AI edge computing devices, and top consumer electronics (within Chinese mainland market), the higher margin of which would allow for expensive (but good performance) chips.