The successor to the XRING 01 is scheduled to launch later this year, with a key Xiaomi executive spilling the beans on the XRING 03’s arrival. With the company’s continued efforts in R&D, it has managed to develop a more powerful version, but with Apple, Qualcomm, MediaTek, and Samsung not taking a backseat in mass producing technologically superior SoCs, it’s possible that Xiaomi loses an edge in a specific area.
The XRING 03 is expected to remain on TSMC’s 3nm node, making it an entire generation behind upcoming 2nm competitors
The XRING 01 was fabricated on TSMC’s second-generation 3nm ‘N3E’ process, enabling a massive performance and efficiency boost that allowed the SoC to stand ‘toe to toe’ with its rivals. However, the XRING 03 may not exude the same prowess, even as the President of Xiaomi Group, Lu Weibing, proudly confirmed that the new chipset would launch later this year.
Based on a multitude of reports, Xiaomi isn’t going to switch to TSMC’s 2nm process and is expected to utilize the older 3nm ‘N3P’ node, meaning that it cannot directly compete with the likes of the Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 6 Pro, Dimensity 9600, or even Apple’s A20 and A20 Pro. There’s no word on why Xiaomi would stick to an older manufacturing process, but the reason likely has to do with absurdly expensive wafer costs.
Chipsets like Qualcomm’s top-end Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 6 Pro are estimated to cost upwards of $300 when they arrive this year, and only if they are ordered in a significantly higher volume. Also, the economics would make little sense to Xiaomi, given that it would likely request TSMC for a significantly smaller batch of XRING 03 units. However, if there’s one silver lining for the Chinese firm in switching to an older lithography, it’s that its in-house silicon can be adopted in more applications than just smartphones and tablets.
According to earlier reports, the XRING 03 could be found in automobiles, but that could mean that its launch takes a little longer due to stringent verification requirements. The flipside is that Xiaomi’s new SoC could open up a massive ecosystem similar to Apple’s. As for its specifications, very little is known about the XRING 03, but we doubt Xiaomi will introduce in-house CPU cores like Qualcomm’s Oryon architecture, so it looks like we’ll see ARM’s CPU and GPU designs getting adopted later this year.
News Source: MyDrivers
About the author: Omar Sohail is a reporter and analyst for Wccftech's mobile section, specializing in the technology and business of the mobile industry. His expertise lies in the intricate hardware supply chain, covering developments in semiconductor manufacturing, chip lithography, and camera sensor technology.
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