Xiaomi launches the Xring O3, a 3nm SoC for its mobile devices, as it seeks to reduce reliance on foreign chips from longtime suppliers Qualcomm and MediaTek
BloombergGao Yuan
Context & Ripple Effects
Xiaomi’s Xring program moved from a reported plan for a self-designed smartphone chip in 2024 to the Xring O1 rollout in May 2025, when the company said its first 3nm design would power three devices. The O3 makes that effort an ongoing product line rather than a one-off high-end experiment.
The company had put about $1.9 billion into the O1 and outlined more than $6.9 billion in chip-design investment over at least a decade. That spending frames the O3 as a strategic attempt to control a component long supplied by Qualcomm and MediaTek.
First-order effects
Xiaomi expands its in-house mobile silicon option, giving its device teams a second source alongside Qualcomm and MediaTek processors.
Qualcomm and MediaTek face a narrower share of Xiaomi’s future premium-device chip demand as Xiaomi deploys the Xring O3.
Second-order effects
Xiaomi gains more leverage in chip purchasing and product planning because it can weigh external suppliers against its own 3nm design.
Qualcomm and MediaTek must compete for Xiaomi business where their modem, performance, software support, and commercial terms offer advantages over Xiaomi’s internal alternative.
Third-order effects
If Xiaomi continues to refresh Xring designs, handset competition shifts further from buying standardized processors toward integrating silicon roadmaps with a manufacturer’s own devices.
The effort reinforces a second-source compute model in which large device makers reduce dependence on a small set of mobile-chip vendors without necessarily eliminating them.
The trend: Large device makers are treating custom silicon as both a product-differentiation tool and a hedge against dependence on incumbent chip suppliers.
Xiaomi is the Chinese tech giant. Their phones compete with iPhones. Their new CPU roughly matches Apple cores on single threaded tasks, and is much faster in multithreaded execution. Of course, Apple may soon announce their next processor, so this edge may not last long. And
Xiaomi launches new Xring chip, partners with TSMC for production TSMC will manufacture the new chip using its 3-nanometre production technology. Yes it's complicated...Why not Huawei? Consumer devices...no coherent policy all the way down... https://www.reuters.com/...
near the Apple A20 launch but Android-side SoCs being far away from iOS land on single-thread performance are the old times (except Google Tensor. _that_ one sucks)
This is extremely interesting. What's going on here? XRING 03 is trivial, high-end SoC from Xiaomi. What the hell is 0100 though? 6nm, Wafer-on-wafer NPU-DRAM bonding with 1.4µm pitch. Similar philosophy to Logic Folding. I'm surprised that TSMC (apparently) fabbed that.
Xiaomi's Xring O3 has achieved an AnTuTu score of 5.22 million, far surpassing every smartphone processor currently available. Its GPU performance has improved by a massive 85%. The chip features six ultra-large CPU cores plus four additional cores, and is also the first to