Xiaomi announced that the upcoming Xiaomi 18 Fold volition beryllium powered by the in-house Xring O3 chip, the successor to the Xring O1. What happened to the O2? Well, the O3 is truthful good, that Xiaomi skipped a fig – that’s lone partially a gag arsenic Geekerwan examined the caller spot and it says it delivers a two-generations betterment successful vigor ratio compared to the O1.
The Xring O3 is simply a contradiction – it uses older tech and yet it looks similar it tin combat the upcoming Dimensity 9600 and Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 6 chips. For starters, the spot is fabbed by TSMC connected a 3nm node called N3P, an improved mentation of the N3E that was utilized for the O1. N3P is besides utilized for the outgoing Dimensity 9500 and Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5. MediaTek and Qualcomm volition usage a caller 2nm node for their upcoming 9600 and Gen 6 chips.
It’s not conscionable that – Xiaomi utilized Arm’s C1 bid of CPU cores, which are already successful the Dimensity 9500 and the Exynos 2600. The upcoming Dimensity 9600 volition surely power to the C2 bid of CPU cores that should beryllium announced soon.
Even so, the results are rather awesome – the Xring O3 trounces the Dimensity 9500 successful show and vigor ratio and comes adjacent to Apple’s A19 CPU cores.
If the CPU tin tally astatine afloat tilt, it hits the 15,000 points people successful multi-core Geekbench, truthful it gets adjacent to Apple M5 level of performance. You’ll ne'er spot that successful a phone, however, arsenic it burns implicit 20W of power. At much tenable levels, it tin bash 12,000 points – this is Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 level of show – astatine fractional the powerfulness of the Gen 5.
Note that since the Xiaomi 18 Fold hasn't really been announced, the Xring O3 is presently lone disposable for investigating connected a improvement board. Geekerwan volition re-run the tests erstwhile a telephone mentation is disposable to spot if the tighter packaging had a antagonistic impact.
The CPU whitethorn usage the older C1 cores, but the GPU is marque caller – it debuts the Arm G2-Ultra NX MC16 GPU. This is simply a 16 halfway GPU with 2 halfway types – 1 regular and 1 with the NX extension. This adds hardware to assistance with AI-powered representation upscaling and framework procreation for games.
The GPU is simply a due beast – if we ever spot it successful a laptop, that laptop volition bushed laptops with Intel Lunar Lake and travel adjacent to M5-powered MacBooks. Or successful desktop terms, this beats a desktop GeForce GTX 1060 6GB (while utilizing a batch little powerfulness – inactive much than is disposable successful a phone, though). For telephone usage, which is the main use-case for this chip, the GPU offers a large equilibrium of show and powerfulness ratio – it’s amended than the Apple A19 Pro and Dimensity 9500 GPUs.
Again, this show was achieved connected a improvement board. Said committee was equipped with LPDDR6 RAM – each module has a 24-bit information bus, compared to 16-bit for LPDDR5X (which the spot besides supports). The committee was configured with 4 modules for a 96-bit autobus moving astatine 10,667MT for a full of 113.8GB/s. Whether specified configurations are imaginable connected a telephone remains to beryllium seen – also, an LPDDR6 configuration volition outgo much than an LPDDR5X one, truthful we’ll spot however things shingle out.
Xiaomi besides included an in-house developed NPU, which offers a monolithic 200 TOPS of show utilizing INT4. The NPU unsocial has 8MB of L2 cache and the spot arsenic a full has 16MB of SLC.
The Xring O3 is simply a precise ample spot – Geekerwan measured it astatine 138.3mm² and support successful caput that the spot doesn’t person an on-board modem. It’s larger than the Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 astatine 126.2mm², which does person a modem, and is astir the aforesaid size arsenic the Dimensity 9500 astatine 140.6mm², which besides has a modem. The Xiaomi squad did awesome enactment astatine packing successful truthful overmuch hardware, but this can’t beryllium inexpensive to manufacture.
One country that the squad tin enactment connected is packaging – the O3 uses the aged Package-on-Package attack wherever the RAM is stacked straight implicit the chipset. This makes for precise abbreviated connections betwixt chipset and RAM but isn’t large for cooling. A much modern attack places the chipset and RAM broadside by broadside to connection much absorption to the cooling system.
We can’t hold to spot however the Xring O3 stacks up against next-gen chips from MediaTek, Qualcomm, Samsung and Apple. They volition person a node advantage, but Xiaomi’s precocious plan mightiness beryllium capable to support the O3 competitive.
By the way, we’ve seen reports that Xiaomi is banned from utilizing 2nm TSMC nodes (for governmental reasons), which whitethorn beryllium wherefore the institution chose the N3P node. We haven’t seen authoritative confirmations of that, however.
PS. Xiaomi besides developed an automotive spot called the Xring D100 for usage successful its vehicles.
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