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Ever since rumors circulated that Google was developing its own chip for Pixel phones, one of the burning questions we have been asked time and time again is: what are its specs? Leak after leak have confirmed various pieces of information about the Google Tensor chip, but none have confirmed details about the most important part: the processor. A recent Geekbench listing purportedly of the Google Pixel 6 Pro sparked wild speculation online about the Tensor’s processor, and we can finally address some of these theories thanks to our source.
All Google Tensor rumors so far
First of all, a little background. In early 2020, various Korean sources and American news site Axes reported that Google’s “whitechapel” chip will be designed in cooperation with Samsung and manufactured using SLSI’s 5nm process. Rumors at the time claimed that Google’s chip would include an octa-core ARM processor made up of two Cortex-A78 + two Cortex-A76 + four cortex-A55 cores, a ready-made Mali GPU from ARM, a optimized hardware for machine learning, and optimizations for the company’s Google Assistant service. Given the challenges of developing a custom SoC, it made sense for Google to use existing processor cores for its first mobile chipset, so those rumors seemed plausible to many.
Many months went by without news about Google’s Custom Silicon until 9to5Google reported in April that the chip would debut on the Pixel 6 series. Finally, Google last month confirmed its intention to ship the Pixel 6 series with its internal chip, called the Google Tensor. They also confirmed some high-level details about the chipset, such as how its TPU is used to run HDRNet on every frame of a video, how the chip powers new AI features on the device, and how the chip protects user data with its second generation Titan M2 module.
Google’s surprise announcement in early August confirmed most of the information leaked last year, while confirmation of some of the remaining rumors came from other leaks. A comment left by a Googler on the Google Issue Tracker corroborated the tidbit on the standard Mali GPU, which we now know to be the Mali-G78. A teardown of an Android 12 beta revealed that the Pixel 6 will have a Samsung Exynos modem, which was later corroborated by Reuters. The last remaining spec that had yet to be confirmed was the processor, which is why so much attention has been given to this Geekbench listing.
The Geekbench result that many assumed came from the Pixel 6 Pro. While we can never be 100% certain, we do lean heavily to ensure that this benchmark is legitimate. Build footprint, kernel version string, CPU frequencies, CPU clusters, GPU info, etc. correspond to the values of the Pixel 6 Pro from our source. It would be highly unlikely that anyone would have faked this list, which would be possible but requires the person to know the exact values to fool our source which has real material.
Based on the incomplete CPU information in this list, leaks such as Digital discussion station extrapolated the CPU configuration of the Google Tensor chip. The most shocking part of this speculation for many was the suggestion that the Google Tensor processor would have dual Cortex-X1 cores, Arm’s most powerful Cortex processor to date. On the other hand, neither the Qualcomm Snapdragon 888 nor the Samsung Exynos 2100 has more of a Cortex-X1 core. If this chip also has two Cortex-A78 cores in addition to the two Cortex-X1 cores, then the Google Tensor is perhaps the fastest chipset on an Android device to date.
As many have noted, the Geekbench score is way below the average for the Exynos 2100 Galaxy S21 and Qualcomm Snapdragon 888 devices, which is odd considering the hardware in question. After speaking with Andrei Frumusanu, mobile editor at AnandTech, we have come to the conclusion that you can not draw a conclusion about the actual performance of the Pixel 6 Pro from this single benchmark result. As he noted during our discussion, it’s hard to say which core was strained for the single-core part of the reference, and the core was apparently locked at 2.15 GHz anyway, which is far below. of the maximum frequency of the cores X1. Several factors could have contributed to this disappointing benchmark result, such as unoptimized DVFS or scheduler settings, all of which could have prevented Geekbench from running cores at their peak frequencies. If we want to know how fast the Pixel 6 Pro is, we’ll have to wait until more people with the phone run the benchmark.
Google Tensor specifications of a real Pixel 6 Pro
While the benchmark does not confirm the microarchitectures of Google Tensor’s processor cores, we were ultimately able to determine what the likely designs of each processor core are from our source. We were contacted by a source who has a real Pixel 6 Pro yesterday, and we learned from their device that the tri-cluster core design and processor frequencies revealed by this Geekbench listing are accurate. Following our report yesterday, we found the exact parts of the processor in the Google Tensor chip, which are exposed to the system via / proc / cpuinfo, a file populated by the processor itself and read by the kernel. So, the chances that it was tampered with are very low, although there is a small possibility that Google itself has masked CPU IDs in the output. We say it’s a moo possibility because Google didn’t bother to spoof or obscure any other data on the device, but who knows – it may very well be that Google Tensor’s CPU parts are the only thing they care to hide.
Assuming the output has not been tampered with, we’ve determined that Google Tensor will have the following processor configuration:
- 2x ARM Cortex-X1 clocked at 2.802 GHz
- 2x ARM Cortex-A76 clocked at 2.253 GHz
- 4x ARM Cortex-A55 clocked at 1.80 GHz
AnandTech‘s Andrei thinks using dual X1 cores is reasonable, but he and others we have spoken to are puzzled by the apparent use of dual A76 cores. The Cortex-A76 was announced in mid-2018 and has been replaced by the A77 and more recently the A78, which is significantly better in terms of power, performance and area (PPA). It’s hard for us to justify why Google may have chosen to use two A76 cores instead of two A78 cores when there is very little apparent benefit to doing so. We even checked the cpuinfo output of various Qualcomm and Exynos devices just to make sure the results were as expected and that we didn’t misinterpret the Pixel 6 Pro’s release. We’d love to be wrong about that claim, but there’s no doubt that this processor configuration is what the cpuinfo output of a real Pixel 6 Pro device suggests.
One important detail that we don’t know about is the amount of cache available for the processor cores. A large cache is large enough for the cores to reach the performance that Arm claims to be able to achieve.
Additionally, we still don’t know the number of GPU cores which is difficult to find as this information is not easily exposed to the system. We previously learned that the Pixel 6 will have the same GPU design as the Exynos Galaxy S21 – the ARM Mali-G78 – a fact that we can corroborate by real material. The GPU can be clocked at up to 848MHz, although without knowing the number of cores, we don’t know how well the phone will perform compared to other devices with this GPU.
ARM Mali-G78
In our previous report, we confirmed that Google Tensor included the “g5123b” modem, which most likely refers to Samsung’s Exynos 5123 modem. We also reported that the phone supports 6E Wi-Fi (i.e. 6 GHz Wi-Fi), has a tensor processing unit (TPU) codenamed “abrolhos “clocked up to 1.230 GHz, will be paired with a 12 GB LPDDR5 RAM module, and will also feature at least one storage variant with 128 GB of UFS storage. The phone will also have a UWB radio for short-range location tracking and digital car key support, among other features.
AV1 decoding, other new features
The Pixel 6 Pro comes with Google’s AV1 decoder (c2.google.av1.decoder), which is hardware accelerated by Google Tensor chip. The device can decode AV1 content up to 4K resolution and 60 fps. It can also decode HEVC content up to 4K and 120fps resolution, or 8K and 30fps resolution. In comparison, the Samsung Exynos 2100 can decode AV1 content at up to 8K and 30fps resolution, or HEVC content at 8K and 60fps resolution. Still, the fact that the Google Tensor chip supports hardware-accelerated AV1 decoding is important, because so far not all Qualcomm Snapdragon chips – and, by extension, older Google Pixel phones – have not supported. support this feature.
That Google has chosen to include HW AV1 decoding in its own Google Tensor chip should come as no surprise, as the company has been one of the biggest supporters of the royalty-free video codec. The company’s pressure to demand AV1 support was one of the main grievances Roku cited when it removed the YouTube TV app from its platform.
Speaking of codecs, our source confirmed to us that the Pixel 6 Pro supports aptX and aptX HD codecs, two Bluetooth audio codecs used by many wireless headsets on the market. These codecs must be licensed from Qualcomm, so some of our readers were concerned that the Pixel 6 series would not support them because they don’t have Snapdragon chips. A Snapdragon chip isn’t needed to support aptX, however, so these concerns were mostly unfounded. However, it’s still good to confirm that the Pixel 6 series will support high-quality Bluetooth audio. Sony’s LDAC is also supported.
Finally, our source confirmed something we already suspected: There is no video output on the Pixel 6 Pro. Google has, once again, chosen not to implement the DisplayPort alternate mode, which allows a DP video signal to be sent through the USB-C port. Android has had a barebone desktop mode for a few versions now, but Google seems unwilling to have anything to do with it. It’s unfortunate because the phones are more than powerful enough to handle the daily tasks of the average user, and with 12GB of RAM, the Pixel 6 Pro can easily handle all of your multitasking needs.
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