Xiaomi reportedly abandons all hope of an in-house CPU

Huawei has done very well out of its dedicated HiSilicon division, which has generated the Kirin chipsets on which this OEM's phones (as well as those of its sub-brand Honor) run, to great acclaim and benchmarking effect in some cases.

Indeed, given the company's current international-relations issues, it is just as well it decided to set it all up in the first place. HiSilicon's success may be a factor in Xiaomi's decision to set up R&D into its own analogous Surge chipsets.

However, its experience with such endeavors have not matched those of its fellow Chinese giant. The project has technically resulted in only 2 SoCs: the Surge S1, which met with critical indifference for the phone in which it was incorporated.

It was to be succeeded by the S2, which, with its reported quad Cortex-A73 cores, might indeed have competed with the top-end Kirin counterpart of the day. However, this second generation somehow never materialized, and Xiaomi has mostly relied on Qualcomm for mobile-device processors ever since.

Now, a Weibo user who claims to be knowledgeable about this situation at Xiaomi has indicated that the OEM is finally pulling the plug on its in-house CPU effort. Expense and difficulty in development have been cited as factors in this decision. However, Xiaomi shas not given up on proprietary chipsets altogether.

The same industry source also now asserts that the company will re-focus such efforts on chips for wireless communications technology such as radiofrequency (RF) or Bluetooth low-energy (LE) applications. Given Xiaomi's prowess as a wearables, peripherals and accessories brand, this may indeed be a better avenue for them to explore. In addition, the company has partnered with or invested in other groups such as Songguo Electronics to make the chipsets necessary for internet-of-things (IoT) or AI products.