Xiaomi showcases self-developed 3nm chip at IFA debut

Xiaomi has expanded its in-house semiconductor ambitions with three new processors in its Xuanjie (XRing) family, spanning smartphones, edge AI, and autonomous driving. The chips were first unveiled on August 24 in China and showcased internationally at IFA 2026 in Berlin this week, marking the company's debut at the trade show.forbes+1

The lineup includes the XRing O3, a 3nm flagship smartphone SoC; the XRing O100, a 6nm high-bandwidth AI accelerator; and the XRing D100, a 3nm chip designed for intelligent driving applications.reuters+1

The O3: Xiaomi's Flagship Mobile Chip

The O3 is built on TSMC's Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company Limited ↗ 2.95% 3nm process and packs 24 billion transistors into a 133mm² die. It features a 10-core CPU with a maximum clock speed of 4.35GHz, a 16-core GPU, and an NPU delivering up to 200 TOPS of tensor computing performance. The chip also introduces LPDDR6 memory support, claiming bandwidth of 113.8GB/s.engineerlive

Early benchmarks suggest the O3 outperforms Qualcomm's ↗ 2.54% Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 while consuming less power. The chip will debut in the Xiaomi 18 Fold, a wide-aspect foldable smartphone set for its official China launch on September 7.mashable+2

Edge AI and Autonomous Driving

The XRing O100 targets the memory bottleneck that constrains on-device AI workloads. Using 6nm 3D wafer-level stacking, it bonds two layers of high-speed DRAM to an NPU layer, achieving bandwidth of 1.22TB/s across 14 NPUs. Xiaomi says it can run on-device AI inference at 330 tokens per second.x+1

The XRing D100 is aimed at autonomous vehicles. The 3nm chip combines a 20-core CPU with a 16-core NPU and supports up to 160GB of unified memory, capable of running AI models with up to 200 billion parameters. Both the O100 and D100 have completed development and are expected to reach commercial deployment in 2027.engineerlive+2

A Platform Strategy Takes Shape

Xiaomi president William Lu told Forbes that the chip program reflects the company's push to build "foundational technologies" powering its "Human x Car x Home" ecosystem of smartphones, electric vehicles, and smart appliances. Lu said Xiaomi will continue working with Qualcomm and MediaTek but emphasized that "every business is chip-dependent".forbes

Reuters reported that Xiaomi has partnered with TSMC for production of the new chips. According to Jon Peddie Research, the company has committed at least 50 billion yuan in planned investment for its semiconductor program, while Xiaomi has disclosed cumulative R&D spending of more than 21 billion yuan to date.jonpeddie+2