Xiaomi has unvieled its first in-house SoC called Surge S1 alongside Mi 5c smartphone in China that has been built on the 28nm process. Mi 5c becomes the first smartphone to feature Surge S1. The all new Surge S1 is claimed to be better in performance when compared to Qualcomm Snapdragon 625 and MediaTek Helio P10 & P20 SoCs.
Also Read: Xiaomi Mi 5c launched with company’s own SoC “Surge S1”
It’s an octa-core 64-bit processor clocks at up to 2.2GHz, more specifically, four ARM Cortex-A53 cores clocks at 2.2GHz and remaining four ARM Cortex-A53 cores clocks at 1.4GHz. It comes integrated with a Mali-T860 quad-core GPU which is 40 percent more power efficient in comparison to Mali-T760. It took company’s engineers 28 months to develop Surge S1 with the help of Leadcore Technologies Ltd. (state-backed chip making company based in China).
Xiaomi’s Beijing Pinecone Electronics signed an agreement back in 2014 to jointly design chip with Leadcore Technology Ltd, Datang Telecom Technology Co Ltd. subsidiary. According to Xiaomi, it has been granted over 3,600 patents including the 1,500 patents bought from Microsoft Corp last year. Company’s aim behind developing the chip is to take total control over the smartphone design and lower the prices to kick-off the sales once again.
The SoC also packs 32-bit DSP for better voice processing and dual microphones for noise cancellation. It has also been integrated with 14-bit dual ISP and Xiaomi’s own Surge ISP algorithm to improve camera light sensitivity by up to 150 percent which results into 15 percent less power consumption. It also features upgradable baseband and programmable modem architecture.
Surge S1 features Chip level security to protect your data and prevent unauthorized network access. The company conducted some tests and shared the results to show off that its first in-house Soc beats a number of chipsets in the same range.
“We need to master the core technologies of our industry and tightly integrate the development of our hardware with our software helping us to make even better smartphones,” said CEO Lei Jun.