https://asiatimes.com/2024/10/xiaomi-is-said-to-have-designed-its-own-3nm-chip/
Xiaomi is said to have designed its own 3nm chip
A big ‘tapeout’ for a firm that once had given up on designing its own smartphone processors after failed attempts
Xiaomi Inc, a Beijing-based smartphone maker, is said to have “taped out” its first 3 nanometer system-on-chip (SoC) processor, which is to be mass produced in the first half of 2025.
In the semiconductor industry tapeout is a term – left over from the days of reel-to-reel magnetic tape – for the much-awaited point in the development process when the final design data are stored and sent for fabrication.
The information about the success of Xiaomi’s 3nm chip was disclosed on October 20 by Tang Jianguo, chief economist of Beijing Municipal Bureau of Economy and Information Technology, on Beijing Satellite TV.
Chinese media said that, if the news proved correct, Xiaomi’s achievement in chip-design would be a historic milestone for China as it would be the first 3nm chip designed by a Chinese firm.
There has been no information regarding the 3nm chipset’s central processing unit (CPU) cluster, graphic processing unit (GPU) or architecture.
A technology columnist using the pseudonym “Uncle Biao” says in an article published on Monday that it is likely that the new 3nm chip was jointly developed by Xiaomi and Taiwan’s MediaTek and will be manufactured by Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC).
Wccftech.com, a United States-based IT gadget website, says it is possible that Xiaomi could be sanctioned by the United States due to its breakthrough in designing 3nm chips.
The article says that if Xiaomi has successfully reached the tapeout status for its 3nm chipset, it means that other Chinese firms, including the sanctioned Huawei Technologies, can also use this processor in their devices.
Wccftech.com reported in August that Xiaomi might launch a system-on-chip processor in the first half of 2025, the chip to be mass produced via TSMC’s N4P process, which can improve a chip’s performance, power efficiency and transistor density.
US export controls
Since August 15, 2022, the US Commerce Department’s Bureau of Industry and Security (BIS) has banned Chinese firms from accessing America’s electronic computer-aided design (ECAD) software that is used in a variety of applications by the military and aerospace defense industries for designing complex integrated circuits.
Chinese analysts said at that time that the new US export controls of electronic design automation (EDA) software would not have an immediate impact on China, which did not design 3nm chips.
Gregory Allen, director of the Wadhwani AI Center at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), said in a report in October 2022 that America’s dominance of the EDA software market is one of the four choke points being used to strangle the Chinese chip design industry.
Other choke points included the United States’ export ban of high-end AI chips, chip-making equipment and related components to China.
Mentor Graphics, Cadence Design Systems and Synopsys are the three leading companies in the semiconductor EDA market. All three are headquartered in and have the bulk of their staff in the US, although Mentor is a subsidiary of Europe’s Siemens.
A 10-year journey
It is unclear how Xiaomi gained access to American EDA software. But most commentators believe that the company’s chip-design technology mainly came from MediaTek.
In November 2014, Pinecore, a fabless chipmaker in which Xiaomi is reported to have a 51% stake and Leadcore Technology a 49% stake, said it decided to acquire a chip-making package called SDR1860 from Leadcore for 103 million yuan (US$14.5 million). Leadcore is a joint venture set up by China’s Datang Telecom Technology and MediaTek.
In 2017, Xiaomi launched its first smartphone chip called S1, which is an octa-core SoC. It was fabricated on TSMC’s 28nm high-performance compact plus (28HPC+) technology, which features high performance and low power advantages. However, the S1 chip was later found to have a serious overheating problem.
In 2020, Xiaomi tried to launch another chipset called S2 but the chip failed to complete the tape-out process and could not be used.
Lei Jun, founder and chief executive of Xiaomi, had once said that chip design is a high-risk game that after huge investment can end up yielding nothing.
A Yunnan-based columnist says in an article published in August this year that it’s crucial for Xiaomi to develop its own chips as Qualcomm’s Snapdragon processors are getting increasingly expensive. He says the launch of a new SoC next year is only one of Xiaomi’s moves to try to achieve self-sufficiency.
In the first quarter of this year, MediaTek maintained its position as the top smartphone processor maker with a global market share of 39%. It shipped 114 million chips, up 17% year-on-year, during the period, according to Canalys, a global technology market analyst.
Xiaomi, Samsung and OPPO were the top three contributors, representing 23%, 20%, and 17% of MediaTek’s smartphone processor shipments, respectively.
For comparison, Qualcomm’s smartphone processor shipments grew by 11% to reach 75 million units in the first quarter, with 46% of the shipments coming from Samsung and Xiaomi.
Follow Jeff Pao on X: @jeffpao3