Xiaomi's Surge S1, A Capable Processor

Recently, Xiaomi unveiled its first in-house processor, the Surge S1, the lower tier of Xiaomi’s Pinecone CPUs, which has been bundled with the Mi 5c.

Inside The Box
Built on the 28nm process, the Surge S1 is targeted basically for the mid-range market. It is an octa-core processor based on 64-bit architecture, coupled with four ARM Cortex A-53 processors, clocked at 2.2 GHz and four other, with lower clock-speeds of 1.4 GHz, for more power efficiency.

The Surge S1 will come integrated with a Mali T-860 quad-core GPU, which provides a 40% improvement in power efficiency versus the Mali T-760.

Xiaomi's Promise

Xiaomi’s new SoC comes packed with a bunch of new hardware tweaks. The chipset comes integrated with a 14-bit dual ISP, bundled with the company’s own Surge ISP, which promises a drastic improvement of about 150% of more camera light sensitivity. And it also has dual noise reduction for the pictures taken in low-light. It also has a 32-bit DSP for better voice processing during calls. The SoC also has VoLTE support. The overall hardware processing algorithm of the Surge chipset claims to be 15% more power efficient than its competitors.

The Competition

Speaking of competitors, the Surge S1 brings competition to the Snapdragon 625, 430, Mediatek P20 and others. Xiaomi also released a CPU and GPU benchmark results, pictures below, from which one can easily conclude the Surge S1 easily beats the competition off the table, well at least in synthetic bench results.

Developed and built for over 28 months, Xiaomi’s new SoC is building high hopes for its customers. It also brings in chip-level security that gives the device, better data protection and immunity from unauthorized access as well.

The Surge S1 which is packed in the Mi 5c, is only available in China, since March 3. The Surge S1 might prove Xiaomi’s capability in the game, providing decent capable power, while being easy going on the energy consumption part and also builds a platform for Xiaomi’s upcoming Pinecone CPU line-up. The only thing left to see, how well does it fare with its competition and does it really deliver that which it promises.