Galaxy S27 Ultra could lose to a new Chinese custom-made, record-breaking chip

No efficiency cores, just pure power

The secret behind the record-setting Geekbench score is that the Xring O3 uses 10 performance cores. No efficiency cores clocked at lower speeds, and no medium-power cores either.

The processor is actually made on TSMC's 3nm node, so it's not the latest and greatest when it comes to efficiency, but the scores point toward a new leader on the market.

The Xring O3 uses 24 billion transistors and an "all-big-cores" design. Check out the architecture below:

• 2x Arm C1-Ultra cores clocked at up to 4.35 GHz
• 4x Arm C1-Premium cores clocked at up to 3.68 GHz
• 4x Arm C1-Pro cores clocked at up to 3.15 GHz

The graphics chip is a 16-core Arm G2-Ultra NX GPU that has an 85% improvement in graphics performance and a 64% reduction in GPU power consumption compared to its predecessor, the Xring O2.

Here's a short specs table with some (impressive) benchmark scores:

Xiaomi beats Qualcomm in the LPDDR6 race

The Xiaomi Xring O3 not only delivers clock rates past the 4GHz mark, but it's also technically the first mobile chip to support LPDDR6 memory.

The system was able to achieve memory bandwidth rates of 113.8 GB/s over four 24-bit channels at up to 10,667 MT/s. This practically eliminates potential bottlenecks between the CPU, GPU and NPU processing units.

The potential benefits are many and across the board. This new chip could accelerate gaming, multitasking, and on-device AI. What are the caveats?

Next Xiaomi flagship to challenge the Galaxy S27 Ultra?

This new chipset looks amazing on paper, but there are caveats. For starters, the 10-big-cores design is a big unknown when it comes to battery life. We don't know how well the Xring O3 could handle low-energy tasks.

Secondly, the chip is built on TSMC's previous-generation 3nm manufacturing process, while the upcoming Snapdragon 8 Elite Extreme Gen 6 will be using a 2nm node. We also don't know how hot this new chipset runs, and this could be a limiting factor for the use of the Xring O3 in ultra-thin devices, such as foldables. Speaking of which.

Xiaomi could try and slap this new silicon inside the Xiaomi 18 Fold, scheduled to be released later this month, but the energy requirements and heat dissipation could be issues in a foldable.

The next candidate is the Xiaomi Pad 9 Pro Max, a premium tablet also expected to launch this month. It's a better device to test run the new chipset, as it has enough space to handle the heat and a big enough battery in case the efficiency is not stellar.