Xiaomi is on its way to becoming a chipset manufacturer and the company’s first SoC (System-on-Chip) dubbed “Pinecone” is said to be planned for an official unveiling on the 28th of February. Until then, it appears that new data regarding the chipset’s characteristics emerged from China’s Sina Weibo network, where industry analyst Sun Changxu recently wrote a few lines in regards to what the so-called Xiaomi Pinecone SoC will have to offer.
To begin with, the source claims that the Xiaomi Pinecone will indeed rely on a total of 8 CPU cores. However, it doesn’t mention if the CPU will adopt a true octa-core configuration or of it will split the cores into multiple clusters using big.LITTLE technology or similar. Either way, the source claims that the SoC will incorporate its own LTE-Advanced Cat.6 modem, which is quite ambitious given the fact that not too many chipsets come with an integrated LTE chip out of the box. Furthermore, the source adds that the Xiaomi Pinecone SoC will not fit in the premium market or low-end markets, but instead it will be positioned in the mid-range or upper-mid-range segment where it will attempt to challenge rivals including the MediaTek Helio P10, as well as the Qualcomm Snapdragon 625. For a more accurate point of reference, the MediaTek Helio P10 is manufactured on a 28nm process and houses four ARM Cortex-A53 cores clocked at 2.0 GHz, four ARM Cortex-A53 cores operating at frequencies of up to 1.2 GHz, and a Mali-T860 MP2 (dual-core) graphics chip. On the other hand, the Qualcomm Snapdragon 625 features an 8-core ARM Cortex-A53-based processor clocked at up to 2.0 GHz per core, and an Adreno 506 GPU.
Judging by previous events surrounding the so-called Xiaomi Pinecone, it is possible that the chipset will be launched in two variants, namely ‘Pinecone V670’ and ‘Pinecone V970’. The former is expected to debut on February 28 at at the Beijing National Convention Centre, whereas the latter might be reserved for a market launch in Q4 2017. Having said that, keep in mind that unconfirmed bits of information remain subject to change until Xiaomi claims otherwise. Either way, it will be very interesting to see how the Chinese tech company will tackle the SoC market and whether or not it will succeed where others – including LG with the Nuclun SoC- have failed.