Following Huawei and Lenovo’s lead in developing self-developed silicon within China, Xiaomi is working on its own XRing 01 SoC. This new chip reportedly features standard Arm Cortex cores and a 3nm-grade process node from TSMC. Per HXL, the XRing 01 carries a beefy decacore configuration, and based on now-delisted Geekbench tests of the chip, shared by leaker Jukanlosreve, Xiaomi’s alternative appears to be delivering performance comparable to MediaTek’s flagship Dimensity 9400 SoC.
Faced with significant restrictions from the U.S. and motivated by potential cost savings compared to alternatives like Qualcomm and MediaTek, Chinese manufacturers are rapidly transitioning towards in-house chip design and manufacturing. Huawei takes this a step further as its latest Kirin X90 SoCs for the Matebook Pro 2025 family is believed to feature custom Arm-based ‘Taishan’ cores and is reportedly fabbed in China using SMIC’s 7nm process.
Xiaomi’s upcoming 15S Pro mobile devices are rumored to be powered by the XRing 01. Leaked specifications suggest the XRing 01 SoC featured a decacore layout, including two Cortex-X925 prime cores at 3.9 GHz, four Cortex A725/X4 cores running at 3.4 GHz, two Cortex A720/A725 cores at 1.89 GHz, and two efficiency-focused Cortex A520 cores at 1.8 GHz.
While mobile SoCs typically don’t employ four distinct core types, the XRing 01 shares this unusual design configuration with Samsung’s Exynos 2400. The dual Prime core setup is similar to Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 8 Elite and Apple’s A18 Pro, though they use custom Arm designs. MediaTek’s Dimensity 9400 is a better comparison, but even that chip sticks to a more conservative octacore layout with just one Prime Cortex-X925 core.
2*X925-3.9GHz4*A725/X4-3.4GHz2*A720/A725-1.89GHz2*A520-1.8GHzMay 18, 2025
An early variant of XRing 01 reportedly managed to score 2,709 points and 8,125 points across the single-core and multicore departments in a now-removed Geekbench listing. This is impressive, but falls behind the Dimensity 9400 likely due to missing optimizations. With its decacore setup, the XRing 01 should be a multicore beast, but we’ll wait for official tests.
Another important bit is the GPU, which is reportedly based on Arm’s Immortalis G925 design. The 12-core version of this GPU (G925-MC12) currently powers the Dimensity 9400 family, however, Xiaomi’s XRing 01 is alleged to incorporate the 16-core version (G925-MC16); that’s a solid 33% on-paper boost in the core count. This should help bridge the gap between Qualcomm’s Adreno 830 in the Snapdragon 8 Elite.
That’s to say, an SoC is comprised of several other components apart from the CPU and GPU. Xiaomi will still need to source or design its own ISPs, modems, NPUs, etcetera. Even Apple only recently broke free from Qualcomm’s stranglehold with its in-house C1 modem, six years after acquiring Intel’s modem business unit. MediaTek and Samsung mostly follow a vertically integrated strategy, while Google’s Tensor chips are equipped with modems from Samsung.
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