Pinecone: Xiaomi’s first in-house chip to power Mi 5c?

All the big mobile players have their own in-house chip designs. Apple has its A-series, Huawei has HiSilicon and Samsung has Exynos. Now, it seems like Xiaomi will be joining the club too, with its Pinecone range of chips.

According to My Drivers (Google Translate) and Android Headlines, Xiaomi will slap its own in-house processor into the upcoming Xiaomi Mi 5c. For the uninitiated, the Mi 5c is a slightly cheaper version of the Mi 5, following in the Mi 4c’s footsteps.

So what kind of chip can you expect from the Chinese brand? According to the reports, the processor will be an octacore design, featuring eight power-sipping A53 cores (in a 4×4 arrangement).

The Xiaomi Pinecone processor range is expected to power the Mi 5c for starters, but could it take over from the Snapdragon chips?

The aforementioned websites as well as Gizmochina report that Xiaomi is readying a more powerful Pinecone processor too, featuring four powerful A73 cores and four A53 cores. In fact, Gizmochina claims that the new chip will sport a 12-core Mali G71 GPU, making for a beefy graphical component.

If confirmed, the high-end chip could match up to Huawei’s HiSilicon Kirin 960 processor, which also features four A73 cores, four A53 cores and a Mali G71 GPU.

Otherwise, the Mi 5c is expected to pack a 5.5-inch 1080p display, 3GB of RAM, 64GB of storage, a 13MP main camera and 8MP selfie snapper.

Featured image: Pinecone website