Pocket, Car, Home: Xiaomi XRING O3, O100, D100
Welcome back to Learn English with Podcasts! Sarah, here's a question to warm up your brain - what do your phone, your car, and your smart speaker have in common?欢迎回到 Learn English with Podcasts!Sarah,先来个问题热热身——你的手机、汽车和智能音箱有什么共同点?
Easy. They all ignore me when I talk to them.简单。它们在我跟它们说话的时候都不理我。
Ha! Okay, technically true. But the real answer is - they all need a brain. A little computer inside that does the thinking.哈!好吧,严格来说没错。但真正的答案是——它们都需要一个大脑。身体里负责思考的小电脑。
True. And those brains usually come from big chip companies like Qualcomm.没错。而且这些大脑通常来自高通这样的大芯片公司。
Right, most companies buy them. But yesterday, Xiaomi introduced three brand-new chips it designed all by itself. One for phones, one for AI speed, and one for cars.对,大多数公司都是买来的。但就在昨天,小米一口气发布了三颗完全自研的全新芯片。一颗给手机,一颗给 AI 提速,还有一颗给汽车。
Three at once? Designing chips is famously hard. That's like a restaurant growing its own vegetables, baking its own bread, AND raising its own cows.一次三颗?做芯片是出了名的难。这就像一家餐厅自己种菜、自己烤面包,还要自己养牛。
And it's not their first rodeo. Last May they released the XRING O1 - the first 3nm flagship chip designed in mainland China. It went straight into their top phone and two tablets.而且这不是他们第一次干了。去年 5 月他们发布了玄戒 O1——中国大陆首款自研 3nm 旗舰 SoC,直接装进了自家顶级手机和两款平板。
How long does something like that take? Genuinely curious.这种事要花多长时间?真心好奇。
Over five years of work, more than 21 billion yuan in research spending, and a team of nearly 3000 engineers.五年多的投入,超过 210 亿元的研发经费,还有一支将近 3000 人的工程师团队。
Five years before anyone could even hold a product. That's patience most companies don't have.五年之后才有人真正拿到产品。这份耐心大多数公司都没有。
Now, about the new family. The star is called XRING O3, and it will appear first inside the Xiaomi 18 Fold - their upcoming folding phone.现在说新家族。主角叫玄戒 O3,它将首发于即将推出的折叠屏手机小米 18 Fold。
What makes this one special? Give me the wow number.这颗特别在哪里?给我一个惊叹数字。
24 billion transistors, on a piece of silicon about the size of your thumbnail.240 亿个晶体管,塞在一块差不多指甲盖大小的硅片上。
Transistors being... the tiny switches that do all the actual thinking?晶体管就是……那些真正负责思考的微型开关?
Exactly. Think of each one as a light switch. More switches means smarter chip. This one has 26% more switches than last year's model, and it scores 5.22 million on AnTuTu - a popular speed test for phones.没错。把每一个都想象成一个电灯开关。开关越多,芯片越聪明。这一代比上一年多了 26%,在安兔兔——一个常用的手机跑分软件——上拿到了 522 万分。
Impressive. But honestly, my current phone already feels fast. Why is everyone suddenly so obsessed with phone chips?厉害。但说实话,我现在的手机已经觉得挺快了。为什么大家突然都对手机芯片这么执着?
One word - AI. The new AI features run directly on your phone, not in some faraway data center. And that completely changes what a phone chip needs to be good at.一个词——AI。新的 AI 功能直接在你的手机上运行,而不是在遥远的机房里。这彻底改变了手机芯片需要擅长的事情。
Ah, so the chip isn't just running apps anymore. It's running brains.啊,所以芯片不再只是跑应用了。它是在跑大脑。
Beautifully said. Example: the graphics section got almost twice as strong while using 64% less power than last year. In this industry, one generation usually brings maybe 20% to 30% improvement.说得好。举个例子:图形模块性能几乎翻倍,功耗却比上一年降低了 64%。在这个行业,一代升级通常也就带来 20% 到 30% 的提升。
Twice the muscle on less electricity? That's breaking the usual rules of progress.更省电还肌肉翻倍?这打破了通常的进步规律啊。
Even memory got special treatment. This is the first phone chip that supports LPDDR6, a new super-fast type of memory. But Xiaomi also attacked waiting time - how long the chip just sits there, twiddling its thumbs, waiting for data to arrive.连内存也得到了特殊照顾。这是第一款支持 LPDDR6 新式高速内存的手机芯片。不过小米还向"等待时间"开刀了——也就是芯片闲坐在那里干等数据送达的时间。
Twiddling its thumbs - love that image. So how do you make data arrive faster?"闲得搓手手"——这个画面我喜欢。那怎么让数据更快到达呢?
Three tricks. First, old systems kept translating between different protocols - like translating Chinese into English, then German, then Russian. Xiaomi made everyone speak one language instead.三个招数。第一,老系统要在不同协议之间不停翻译——像把中文译成英文、再译成德文、再译成俄文。小米干脆让大家都说同一种语言。
Second, they built a dedicated express lane between two important parts of the chip. That alone saved 15 nanoseconds per trip.第二,他们在芯片里两个重要部件之间修了一条专属高速通道。光这一项,每趟就省下 15 纳秒。
Nanoseconds. A billionth of a second each. Are we seriously counting those?纳秒。每纳秒是十亿分之一秒。我们真要计较到这个程度吗?
We are. Your phone does billions of these trips every second. Save a little each time, and suddenly videos load faster and batteries last longer.真的要。你的手机每秒要做几十亿次这样的数据往返。每次省一点点,加起来就是视频加载更快、电池更耐用。
Okay, you said AI changed everything. Where exactly does the AI part live in this chip?好,你刚才说 AI 改变了一切。那 AI 部分到底住在这颗芯片的哪里?
There's a special engine called an NPU. Picture a math genius sitting next to a room full of general office workers. Regular tasks go to the workers; heavy matrix math goes to the genius. This one delivers 200 TOPS of computing power, tuned specially for large language models.里面有个叫 NPU 的专用引擎。想象一位数学天才坐在一屋子普通职员旁边。日常任务交给职员,繁重的矩阵运算交给天才。它能输出 200 TOPS 算力,专门为大语言模型调校。
A genius on the team. Every office needs one.团队里有个天才。每个办公室都需要一位。
And here's my favorite detail - the chip team and the AI model team actually sat together and co-designed things. They pack the model like a suitcase. Same clothes, tighter folding.还有我最喜欢的一个细节——芯片团队和 AI 模型团队真的坐到一起联合设计。他们把模型像行李箱一样打包。同样的衣服,叠得更紧。
Suitcase packing - finally an analogy I can reuse at the airport.行李箱打包——终于有一个我能在机场复用的比喻了。
And the numbers came out great. Answers start 40% faster, replies flow 45% faster, and it uses 26% less power than typical top chips.而且数字非常漂亮。出第一个答案快了 40%,回复生成快了 45%,功耗比典型旗舰芯片低 26%。
So the smart stuff happens right in your hand. No internet needed.所以聪明的部分就发生在你手心里。不需要网络。
And not just the main brain. They added small AI engines everywhere - camera, screen, even the microphone system for online meetings.而且不只是主大脑。他们把小型 AI 引擎加到了各个角落——相机、屏幕,连线上会议用的麦克风系统都有。
Got it. Phone chip covered. What about the other two?明白了。手机芯片讲完了。另外两颗呢?
Number two is my favorite weirdo. It's called XRING O100, and it exists to attack something engineers dramatically call the memory wall.第二颗是我最喜欢的怪咖。它叫玄戒 O100,存在的意义就是攻克工程师们口中那个听起来很戏剧化的"内存墙"。
Memory wall? Like when you walk into a room and forget why you came?内存墙?就像你走进一个房间却忘了自己为什么来?
Ha - close enough, but silicon version. Picture a kitchen. The chef - that's the processor - stands in the living room. The fridge - that's the memory - sits out on the balcony. Every single ingredient gets carried over by hand, back and forth, all day long.哈——差不多,不过这是硅片版。想象一个厨房。厨师——也就是处理器——站在客厅里。冰箱——也就是内存——放在阳台上。每一种食材都得靠人手来回搬,搬一整天。
So half the energy goes to walking, not cooking.所以一半力气花在走路上了,不是做饭。
Exactly. And the obvious fix?就是这个道理。那显而易见的解决办法是什么?
Move the fridge into the kitchen!把冰箱搬进厨房啊!
They went further - they stacked the memory directly UNDER the processor, floor after floor, like a sandwich tower. Data now travels vertically, millimeters instead of centimeters. It's the world's first chip built this way at 6nm.他们做得更彻底——把内存直接堆到处理器正下方,一层接一层,像一座三明治高塔。数据现在垂直流动,走毫米而不是厘米。这是全球第一颗用 6nm 工艺这样造出来的芯片。
Result: bandwidth of 1.22 terabytes per second. Your fancy flagship phone manages around 76.8 gigabytes. This thing is 16 times faster.结果:带宽达到每秒 1.22TB。你那台高级旗舰手机大约只有 76.8GB。这东西快了 16 倍。
Sixteen times! And what does it do with all that speed?16 倍!那这些速度用来干什么?
Feeding giant AI models locally. Paired with the O3, it can push out up to 330 tokens per second. Tokens are the small pieces AI uses to build words.在本地喂饱巨型 AI 模型。和 O3 搭配后,每秒最多能输出 330 个 token。token 就是 AI 组词用的小碎片。
So the machine answers before you finish blinking. Okay, chip number three?所以你还没眨完眼它就把答案吐出来了。好,第三颗芯片呢?
Number three rides in your car. The D100 is China's first 3nm chip for smart driving, strong enough to run a model with 200 billion parameters inside the vehicle itself.第三颗坐在你的车里。D100 是国内首款 3nm 智驾芯片,强大到可以直接在车内运行一个 2000 亿参数的模型。
The car does its own thinking - no cloud required at highway speed.车自己动脑——高速公路上完全不依赖云端。
They previewed it inside a desktop prototype called AI Cube. And my favorite silly detail? Its metal shell has exactly 33,874 tiny holes drilled for cooling.他们提前把它装进一台叫 AI Cube 的桌面原型机展示。我最喜欢的傻细节是什么?它的金属外壳上精确地钻了 33874 个散热小孔。
Somebody counted every single hole. Give that person a raise.真有人把每个孔数了一遍。给那位同事加薪吧。
You know what strikes me though? Most people still picture Xiaomi as a phone company.不过你知道让我感触最深的是什么吗?大多数人还是把小米当成一家手机公司。
Meanwhile the chips are quietly becoming the whole story. Phone, car, living room - one family of brains that all speak the same language. Because here's the thing: the cleverest AI model is useless if the silicon underneath can't keep up.而芯片正在悄悄变成整个故事本身。手机、汽车、客厅——一家人大脑说着同一种语言。因为关键在这儿:如果底下的硅片跟不上,再聪明的 AI 模型也没用。
From pocket to garage to sofa, all running the same recipe. Meanwhile, I still lose my keys twice a week. Maybe they'll design a chip for that next.从口袋到车库再到沙发,跑的都是同一套配方。而我呢,一周还是要丢两次钥匙。也许他们下一颗就该为这个设计芯片了。
Give them five years and another 21 billion yuan - those keys will never escape again. That's all for today! If you enjoyed this episode, share it with a friend who loves gadgets.再给他们五年时间和 210 亿元——钥匙从此再也逃不掉了。今天就到这里!如果你喜欢这期节目,分享给爱数码的朋友吧。
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