It is heard that Google requested a semiconductor that will go into a sensor that can measure body movements rather than for processors that go into current IT devices and an unprecedented application processor (AP). Samsung Electronics also obtained an order from Google regarding manufacturing of more than one chip. Samsung Electronics is currently working on a development phase that involves chip design. “Samsung Electronics is set to manufacture semiconductor chips for Cisco Systems, which is the top network equipment maker in the world, and Google and it is responsible for the entire semiconductor manufacturing process from design to production. A piece from August 2020 from ETNews seems to correctly describe Samsung’s business plan and how it pertains to the Google chip (as well as describing a Cisco design win): It’s been widely reported for some time that a few years back, Samsung opened up itself to semi-custom silicon design offers. Of course, why would the Google SoC follow an Exynos internal naming scheme? That’s where we can begin to see some of the provenance of the design. The latest Samsung LSI SoC, for reference, is the Exynos 2100, which is identified as the S5E9840. Here we find the chip has an ID of “0x09845000”, which corresponds to what would be S5E9845 (Edit: It's actually S5P9845). On the silicon side, the chip has another model number, with the SoC’s fused chip identification following Samsung’s Exynos naming scheme. For quite some time now we’ve also heard the “Whitechapel” being reported, although I’ve seen no evidence that this was a reference to the actual chip but in the very early stages. Internally, Google calls the chip the “GS101”, and while I’m not entirely sure here what GS stands for, it’s likely Google SoC or Google Silicon. So whether the next-gen will be marketed “Tensor 2” or something else will remain to be seen. “Google Tensor” is quite abstract in that, for the time being, the chip doesn’t have any particular model number attached to it in terms of official marketing. Starting off at the very highest level, we have the actual name of the SoC.
And while the overall truth of this will vary based on your definition of “design”, the chip follows a seemingly close cooperation between Google and Samsung LSI, in the process blurring the lines between a traditional custom design and semi-custom design-for-hire chips such AMD’s console APUs.
Officially, per Google’s own materials, the Tensor is a Google SoC fully designed by the company. This includes trying to document what exactly it’s composed of, showcasing the differences or similarities between other SoCs in the market, and better understanding what kind of IPs Google has integrated into the chip to make it unique and warrant calling it a Google SoC.
Today, we’re giving the Tensor SoC a closer look. Taking advantage of Google research’s years of machine learning experience, it’s a chip that’s heavily focused towards ML as its primary differentiating feature, and what is said to allow the Pixel 6 phones to have many of the new unique feature exclusive to them. Google explains that the Tensor is Google’s start in a journey towards the quest of enabling new kinds of workloads, which in the company’s words, were simply not possible or achievable with “standard” merchant silicon solutions. And it’s here where there’s quite a bit of confusion as to what exactly the Tensor is.
One of the biggest changes, and most interesting to our readers, is the fact that the Pixel 6 and Pixel 6 Pro come powered on by Google’s own “Tensor” SoC. Featuring brand new displays, camera systems, body designs, and internal hardware at seemingly extremely competitive pricing, the phones seem to be off to an extremely good start and competitive positioning Google hasn’t had in a long time.
The two new Pixel phones are inarguably Google’s largest shift ever since the Pixel series was introduced, showcasing major changes in essentially every aspect of the devices, sharing very little in common with their predecessors besides the Pixel name. It’s been about two weeks since Google officially announced their newest flagship devices in the form of the Pixel 6, and Pixel 6 Pro.