Xiaomi Unveils Custom 3nm Chip for Intelligent Driving
Xiaomi has unveiled the Xring D100, an in-house 3nm chip for what it calls intelligent driving, replacing the Nvidia Drive hardware that has powered the SU7 and YU7 so far.
The specification is ambitious: a 20-core CPU and 16-core NPU on a 3-nanometre process, supporting up to 160GB of unified memory, which Xiaomi claims is enough to run a 200-billion-parameter model directly on the vehicle.
It is not the only Chinese company doing this. BYD, Nio and Xpeng are all working on in-house silicon, and Alibaba has built its own AI chip to reduce the same dependency.
While Xiaomi hasn’t published a figure for trillion operations per second (TOPS), which ultimately determines performance, it has invested over 21 billion yuan ($3.1 billion) since restarting its chip program, employing nearly 3,000 people in the process. Commercial use of the D100 starts in 2027, alongside the O100 accelerator and O3 mobile processor, which debuts in a folding phone made by TSMC on the same 3nm node.
The cars are the most significant part. Nvidia has supplied the brain of every Xiaomi EV so far; from 2027, it won’t. This move represents independence from both Nvidia and Taiwan, as Tesla, Rivian, and Xiaomi—all with their own driving silicon—have all fabricated their chips at the same plants.
Europe’s flagship new chip plant, ESMC in Dresden, will run 28nm and 22nm CMOS alongside 16nm and 12nm FinFET, according to TSMC’s plans. This is several generations away from 3nm and a significant investment for Europe’s struggling chip industry, which continues to push for a Chips Act 2.0.