The new Pixel 6 and Pixel 6 Pro are finally official after months of leaks. One of the most notable details in these handsets is the presence of Google Tensor chipset, a custom-developed chipset for Pixel smartphones. Google has issued a blog post purportedly talking about the chipset, however, it has kept the technical specifications under the wraps.
The company has talked about the chipset, but just like Apple, didn’t expose many technical aspects of the handset. However, the folks at Engadget managed to uncover some of the details of this handset (via). To kick off the things, it’s important to say that we’re dealing with a 5 nm chipset similar to what Qualcomm, Samsung, and Huawei are offering with their respective flagship processors.
Tensor Chip technical specifications
The Tensor chip’s CPU has a tri-cluster architecture, with two big ARM Cortex-X1 cores running at up to 2.8 GHz. In comparison, to Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 888 and Exynos 2100, there’s one additional ARM Cortex-X1 core. Qualcomm’s solution, however, is clocked slightly higher than its competitor. Moving on, the CPU has also two ARM Cortex-A76 cores clocked at up to 2.25 GHz, and four ARM Cortex-A55 cores running at up to 1.8 GHz. There’s some controversy in the use of ARM Cortex-A76 cores when there are A78 or even A77 standards available. However, the company seems to be confident of the performance offered by its package. For graphical tasks, there is an ARM Mali-G78 GPU. For now, we don’t have exact numbers for this GPU, but we assume it has 20 cores. That is what the previous rumors have been suggesting.
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Advanced recognition systems and Titan M2 for security
According to Google, its chipset was co-designed with Google Research. It allowed it to build an AI / ML platform that’s fit for the future. The Tensor unlocks “new experiences that require state of the art ML”. This covers features like Motion Mode, Face Unblur, Speech enhancement mode for videos, and applying HDRnet to videos.
The Tensor has automatic speech recognition, in fact, the most cutting-edge tech release for Google. The high-quality model can be used in Recorder or Live Caption without draining the entire battery. Not that this is a problem for the Pixel 6 nor the Pixel 6 Pro, as Google finally is bringing smartphones with large batteries. The Tensor also powers the Live Translate feature on the Pixel 6 and Pixel 6 Pro, and apps like Messages and WhatsApp can benefit from this.
The Chip will allow the new smartphone to offer accurate face detection in photos and videos. In addition to the new Tensor, Google is employing a Titan M2 module which is the security core of Tensor. There is also the TrustZone running Trusty OS. The search giant states that its two new phones have more layers of hardware security than one other smartphone. The Titan M2 chip can withstand attacks like electromagnetic analysis, voltage glitching and even laser fault injection.
