‘Google is lagging behind in developing its first fully-owned Tensor SoC’

According to sources from The Information, Google is lagging behind in the development of its first fully proprietary Tensor SoC. It should be released next year, but is now scheduled for 2025. The current Tensor socks are designed together with Samsung.

Development is running according to The Information sources behind because the teams are spread across the United States and India. It would be difficult to divide and coordinate the work between these two teams. In addition, there would be a high turnover among employees in both teams. Due to these problems, certain deadlines are said to have been missed, meaning the chip will not be ready in time for mass production in 2024. Google now expects to be able to put the SoC into mass production a year later.

Since the 2021 Pixel 6 series, Google has been releasing smartphones with Tensor socks. These are currently being made in collaboration with Samsung, with Google adjusting certain parts of the SoC and adding its own NPU for AI tasks. Samsung produces these socks. Since that first Tensor SoC, Google has increasingly replaced Samsung parts with its own Google parts, writes The Information.

With its first Tensor SoC, which may be called Tensor G5, the company no longer wants to be dependent on Samsung. The SoC will have Arm-based cores, just like now. According to the sources, Google plans to make the SoC by TSMC on TSMC’s 3nm process.

That process has several advantages over Samsung’s process. For example, TSMC’s variant is more efficient, allowing more powerful and energy-efficient SoCs to be made. Google might also want to use the SoC for other products, such as VR products.

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