Recent rumors suggest that Xiaomi is working hard to develop its own System on Chip (SoC) custom, which could be officially unveiled in the first half of the 2025According to reliable sources, the Chinese company has entered into a partnership with the chip manufacturer UNISOC (and not as previously announced) for the processor design, entrusting the production to TSMC using its innovative 4nm N4P process.
Xiaomi Proprietary Processor: Features and Release Date
Industry experts in Digitimes they claim that this SoC will be positioned halfway between the Snapdragon 8 Gen 1 and the Snapdragon 8 Gen 2, thus ensuring Xiaomi has a competitive product in the premium segment of the market. The key specifications of Xiaomi's custom SoC include a high-performance Cortex-X3 core, three balanced Cortex-A715 cores and four efficient Cortex-A510 cores for a reduced energy consumption. Additionally, the chip will integrate a high-end IMG CXT 48-1536 GPU, ideal for handling graphics-intensive tasks on computer systems, including gaming and multimedia.
Il modem 5G, developed in collaboration with UNISOC, promises competitive connectivity in line with recent mobile network standards. This decisive step towards technological independence seems to reflect Xiaomi's desire to emulate Huawei's success, which has enjoyed strong government support in its mission to produce proprietary hardware and reduce dependence on foreign suppliers.
The new chip is expected to be called Arises S2 (which we have been talking about for years now), in line with Xiaomi's previous attempt to develop the SoC Surge S1 used in Mi 5C phone launched in 2017. Since then, the company has been working on various chips dedicated to specific functions, such as camera processors, power management ICs, and charging solutions.
According to some rumors, the process of tapeout of Xiaomi's proprietary processor has already begun, under the guidance of its subsidiary Xuanjie, founded in 2021 and headed by Adam Zeng, former CEO of UNISOC and current Senior Vice President of Xiaomi. Xiaomi recently injected additional capital into Shanghai Xuanjie and even created a subsidiary called Beijing Xuanjie, demonstrating its full commitment to developing proprietary chips.
