← Back to context

Comment by jinzo

6 hours ago

This thread is the perfect example of useful idiots with astroturfing. This is a CPU core designed by UK company (and owned by Japanese) made in Taiwan on equipment made in EU (with non trivial USA components). Xiaomi here is the easiest to replace in this chain (and the Chinese have very much tried to replace any of the others, failing for now). Yet they are angling for a huge PR win.

ARM is merely an IP portfolio licensing company. They don't really design or build anything. And everyone uses TSMC (who uses ASML). The primary design is still being done by Xiaomi, that's the most unique part of this build.

Stop downplaying how big of an achievement this is.

  • They license the IP that they design. They design complete chips you can buy and go right to tape out with no changes if you want.

  • And how did that IP portfolio come into existence? Did it suddenly materialize out of thin air or… did ARM engineers design it?

    I’m going to give you the benefit of the doubt: in your mothertongue, the meaning of “design” is not as broad as in English?

  • Below is some additional detail about the processor. Like the parent comment notes, ARM licenses IP of an ISA or core designs (see ARM C1-Ultra cores [0]), licensees like Qualcomm then make specific SoC for different use-cases.

      Xiaomi has made the XRING 03 boast a larger die size than the XRING 01, 
      measuring 133mm² compared to its predecessor’s 109mm² dimensions This change 
      was deemed necessary as the flagship SoC features 16MB of SLC cache, not to 
      mention a new “6 + 4” CPU cluster that comprises two ARM C1-Ultra cores 
      running at 4.35GHz, four C1-Premium cores operating at 3.68GHz and lastly, 
      four C1-Pro cores running at 3.15GHz. [1]
    

    0. https://www.arm.com/products/silicon-ip-cpu/c1-ultra

    1. https://wccftech.com/xiaomi-xring-03-official-tsmc-3nm-n3p-l...

  • You are misunderstanding, and, they are not downplaying.

    A revision or other reply would benefit from explaining how their value chain x location correspondence is wrong - perhaps missing a step?

    Though, in anticipation of a revision, I wonder if its simple as you thought the cores were custom-designed by Xiaomi instead of standard ARM.