Major smartphone makers seem to possess shifted their strategies a touch to plug self-designed silicon, either for imaging or for running the whole device. Perhaps inspired by the eye that Apple has gotten with its new M1 Silicon, more and more manufacturers are becoming into that very same arena, from Vivo’s V1 imaging chip to the AMD-powered Samsung Exynos 2200 to, of course, Google Tensor. The latter has thus far avoided being leaked to death, but this latest information might finally settle one debate while leaving pundits and experts scratching their heads.
There has been quite some speculation about the makeup of Google’s first-ever smartphone SoC, particularly in what configuration of cores it’ll use. Unlike Qualcomm and Samsung’s likes have been using since last year, the Google Tensor was initially leaked to possess a 2x2x4 setup. That doesn’t say anything about which cores would be used, but data extracted from what has been claimed to be an actual Pixel 6 Pro finally sheds some light on thereon subject.
Confirming some theories, XDA says that the 2 most powerful cores will be Cortex-X1 cores running at 2.80GHz. The original standard configuration, Arm itself espoused, uses just one Cortex-X1 core, usually assisted by three Cortex-A78 cores. Although not the newest Cortex-X2, this still gives the Google Tensor a theoretical lead over its contemporaries.
Unfortunately, the remainder of the CPU information negates that advantage. The 2 other powerful 2.25GHz cores are identified to use the Cortex-A76 microarchitecture, while the four “efficient” cores running at 1.80GHz use Cortex-A55 cores. While the Cortex-A55 is more or less current, the Cortex-A76 from 2018 is 2 generations old now. That’s not even considering the very fact that Arm already announced the Cortex-A710 and Cortex-A510 back in May.
Cache size and GPU, the latter believed to be a Mali-G78 running at 848Mhz max, also play critical roles within the overall throughput of the silicon. These factors could affect how the Google Tensor performs within the wild, but it’s currently hard to measure its actual performance with an incomplete picture. Fortunately, the Pixel 6 and Pixel 6 Pro might be a couple of weeks away, and we’ll soon see just how good or bad Google’s first mobile AP is.
