Xiaomi: Abandons development and production of its own Surge Chipset

Sources from China want her Xiaomi has abandoned its efforts to build its own processors - under development in the department Pinecone.

Η  company introduced its first processor in 2017, the Surge S1. She had then introduced him Surge S2 at MWC 2018 but never gave it to a production mobile. Later he had discussions with TSMC for a close cooperation but nothing came up here either. In early 2019, the processor division focused on building AI hardware for IoT devices.

Now it looks like we will have another strategy change. The efforts of Xiaomi processors are now redirected to a microchip for low-power Bluetooth and RF, as well as peripherals. This will be done to help the company keep its phone portfolio competitive and profitable, according to confidential data.

The Surge S1 was a fairly simple 28nm microship featuring eight-core Cortex-A53 ARM processors and a quad-core Mali-T860 GPU. The Xiaomi Mi 5c became the first - and only - phone to use the SoC. The following year there were rumors of a Mi 6c (with the more powerful Surge S2 inside), but the phone was never announced.

Obviously, the S2 had some issues that were never resolved or were not cost effective for mass production. It seems that Xiaomi will remain in its current strategy to use mostly Snapdragon SoCs and occasionally some MediaTek.

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