Xiaomi’s Surge S2 SoCs sampled; built on TSMC’s 16nm FinFET

Xiaomi launched their first device, the Xiaomi Mi 5c, with their Surge S1 SoC which was developed in-house sometime back, and they are already looking forward to their next chipset, dubbed Surge S2. The Surge S2 will be manufactured on TSMC’s 16nm FinFET process.

The Surge S2 is reportedly being sampled by the Chinese tech giant, and will enter volume production in the third quarter of 2017. The Surge S2 is probably not going to be a flagship-class SoC being based on an older manufacturing process, and will find itself powering mid-range devices like the Mi 5c or Mi 6s that are slated for Q4 2017. However we do have flagships powered by SoCs manufactured on the 16nm FinFET process, most notably of which are from Huawei, powered by the also in-house developed Kirin 960, also manufactured on TSMC’s 16nm process.

The Surge S2 was previously rumored to be manufactured on the latest 10nm FinFET process after rumors of a deal between Xiaomi and Samsung to manufacture their latest chips, but fabrications issues seem to have deterred the Chinese company from pursuing the cutting edge. Smartphone manufacturers are definitely looking towards reducing their reliance on Qualcomm, especially after Samsung’s choke hold on access to the Snapdragon 835. Samsung locked out other manufacturers from using the Snapdragon 835 in their latest flagships, forcing LG to use the older Snapdragon 821 in their LG G6 and several other brands to delay their flagships.

Pokdepinion: More contenders in the SoC market will definitely make Qualcomm sweat a little, and hopefully price their processors more competitively, and lead to more affordable devices for consumers. Well, we can wish.