Islamabad, Oct 21: Xiaomi Creates China’s First 3nm Chip, Marking Breakthrough in Advanced Technology
There have long been rumors that Xiaomi is working on a smartphone processor, and it looks like the business has made this milestone.
Xiaomi has successfully finished the “tape-out” process for China’s first 3nm smartphone System-on-a-Chip (SoC), according to a report from Chinese media site MyDrivers. The Beijing Municipal Bureau of Economy and Information Technology’s Chief Economist made this revelation on BRTV, a state-owned television network in China.
On X, a video of that announcement was circulated.
Although the paper verifies that the chip is constructed using a 3nm process, it provides no information regarding the CPU, GPU, or the manufacturer—that is, whether TSMC, Samsung, or another foundry is involved.
But entering the “tape-out” phase denotes the completion of an important silicon design phase.
This indicates that Xiaomi 3nm chip has completed the chip’s design and is prepared to start manufacturing. But widespread production might be a while off, so smartphone use is unlikely to happen very soon.
After the chip is produced—most likely by Samsung or TSMC—Xiaomi must carry out extensive testing. It could be necessary to make changes to the chip design or manufacturing process if the first yield of working chips is low.
It’s important to remember that Xiaomi 3nm chip has past expertise developing its own SoCs. The Pengpai (also known as Pinecone) S1, a 28nm, 8-core processor with a big-little architecture and a maximum clock speed of 2.2GHz, was included in the 2017 Mi 5C.
Since then, Xiaomi hasn’t released another SoC for smartphones, but the company hasn’t stopped creating chips for particular uses.
Chips of the Surge G, P, and C series are primarily focused on picture signal processing, battery management, and charging, respectively. For improved charging and battery performance, the Xiaomi 14 Ultra, for instance, makes use of the Surge P2 and G1 CPUs.
