Xiaomi Announces Custom Chip to Rival Apple Silicon

Chinese Apple competitor Xiaomi today announced the "Xring O1," a custom 3nm chip designed to rival Apple silicon (via Bloomberg).

The company plans to switch its devices to custom silicon chips, just like Apple. The Xring O1 chip will be included in three devices to begin with, including the Xiaomi Tablet 7 Ultra–a newly announced 14-inch tablet.

Like the latest-generation Apple silicon chips, the Xring O1 is made with a ‌3nm‌ fabrication process. The company explicitly said that it asked itself:

We also want to become one of the top chipmakers, with our phones targeting iPhones, can our chips also be compared against those of Apple's?

The Xring O1 will lag behind Apple's latest chips in some respects, such as processor clock speed, but the company still stressed its design achievement.

At a special event to announce the chip and tablet in Beijing, Xiaomi CEO Lei Jun said that the company plans to invest 200 billion yuan ($27.8 billion) in research and development over the next five years. At least $7 billion will be invested in developing and enhancing its own chip technology over the next decade.