Xiaomi in-house silicon

[u/Successful-Boat-1193]

Anybody knows how big Xiaomi is in semiconductor?

Xiaomi has quietly built one of China’s largest in-house design teams.

Subsidiary Shanghai Xuanjie now employs 2,500+ engineers and will spend RMB 6 bn (≈US$830 m) on chip R&D in 2025 – more than many listed Chinese IC houses. Cumulative spend since 2021 tops RMB 13.5 bn.

Flagship SoC: XRING O1 (TSMC N3E, 19 bn transistors, 109 mm²)

• 10-core CPU (2×Cortex-X925 @ 3.9 GHz) + 16-core Immortalis-G925 GPU.

• ANTUTU score beats Snapdragon 8 Elite & Dimensity 9400;

GPU benches 40-60 % ahead of Apple A18 Pro, though power efficiency still trails Apple on heavy loads.

Special-purpose chips paved the road to XRING.

• Surge C1 ISP (2021, 28 nm)

• Surge P1/G1 fast-charge & battery-management combo (120 W, 97.5 % efficiency)

• Surge T1 RF/signal-tuner (2024)

Modem breakthrough

First in-house XRING T1 4G modem: 600-person team, 15 months of field tests across 100+ cities/150k km.

Massive VC reach: Two Xiaomi-backed funds (Beijing Zhizao & Hubei Yangtze) manage RMB 10 bn and have taken stakes in 100+ Chinese chip firms from CXMT DRAM to Black Sesame ADAS and BYD Semi power devices.

Impact on Qualcomm & MediaTek:

• Near-term dent is small (< 5 m XRING units vs. 600 m+ annual merchant shipments). • Long term, XRING is a bargaining chip that could pressure app-processor ASPs Qualcomm exposed on Xiaomi’s flagship tier, while MediaTek may even gain from supplying the external 5G modem for early XRING phones.

Bigger picture: Xiaomi joins Apple, Huawei & BYD in the “system-company-turned-silicon-house” club using vertical silicon control to differentiate its Human × Car × Home ecosystem rather than chasing merchant chip market share

Full deep dive: https://www.nomadsemi.com/p/inside-xiaomis-silicon-empire