Possible specifications of Google Tensor soc for Pixel 6 phones appear
Potential details about the upcoming Google Tensor soc have surfaced. The chip would use eight Arm Cortex cores and a Mali GPU. The Tensor soc was designed by Google and will be used in the upcoming Pixel 6 smartphones that come out later this year.
Google buys various types of Cortex cores and a Mali GPU under license from Arm, writes tech website XDA Developers based on a Geekbench score and an anonymous source that a Pixel 6 Pro would have in his or her possession.
The Tensor chip would include two Cortex-X1 cores, which run at 2.80GHz. The Cortex-X1 is the most powerful smartphone core that Arm currently offers. The X1 is currently used in highly positioned chips from Qualcomm and Samsung, among others. However, those chipmakers only process a single X1 core in their SOCs, while Google would therefore use two.
Remarkably enough, these X1 cores are assisted by two A76 cores at 2.25GHz and four A55 cores at 1.80GHz according to XDA Developers. Where the X1 architecture is still new, the Cortex-A76 cores are from 2018 and are now two generations old compared to the more powerful and more efficient A78 cores, which are used in today’s high-end socs of competing chip makers. The A55 cores also date from 2017, but those cores are still used in modern smartphone chips.
The Arm Cortex-X1 and -A76
XDA Developers further writes that the Google Tensor chip has a Mali-G78 GPU from Arm, with a clock speed of up to 848MHz. That GPU is also used in the Samsung Exynos 2100-soc in the Galaxy S21. According to previous rumors, the Google Tensor soc is produced on Samsung’s 5nm process.
Reuters news agency reported in August that Google will use a 5G modem from Samsung in the Tensor chip. The chip should also receive hardware intended for AI and machine learning, but few details are known about this. The Tensor soc also gets a new security core and Titan M2 security chip.
Google will debut its Tensor soc later this year with the release of its Pixel 6 and Pixel 6 Pro smartphones. It is not yet known when those phones will appear exactly, but Google is expected to introduce these devices in October. Google previously announced the first details about the Pixel 6 series and its Tensor soc.
The Google Pixel 6 and Pixel 6 Pro. Image via Google