Xiaomi is gearing up to release its most anticipated Xiaomi 15 Series flagship at the end of this month. However, today local media ‘Beijing News’ has revealed an ambitious project, which Xiaomi has been working on secretly.
On October 20, 2024, Beijing News was holding a show where a government official who is a Chief Economist of Municipal Bureau of Economy and Information Technology revealed that “Xiaomi successfully tapped out China’s first 3nm process mobile phone system-on-chip”. For starters, if the chip is sent for tape out it means that the design is ready and it is handed over to the manufacturing partner for a small trial production to see if the current design is suitable for mass production or not. If there are any issues, the chip will go into further optimization and will be re-tapped, but in the Xiaomi case, the chip is successfully tapped out, which means the 3nm chip can be mass produced.

In the past as well it was revealed that Xiaomi is secretly working on a System-on-Chip (SoC) for mobile phones. It was revealed by Mediatek CEO at the start of this year when he said that ARM is working with Xiaomi with their new project.
This is not the first time that Xiaomi is working on a SoC, in 2017 Xiaomi launched Surge S1 SoC. But it was based on 28nm and the new chip is based on 3nm. This is a significant milestone for Xiaomi as 3nm is currently the most advanced chip architecture and it places Xiaomi in the elite club which has the capabilities to design a 3nm chip.
There is currently no official confirmation regarding this reveal, however the current tape out means the mass production of the chip is at least half a year away. However we will keep a close eye on this so stay tuned.