Google: ‘Tensor was built for how people use their phones today and how people will use them in the future’
Blaming computing limitations of third-party options, Google announced that its newest smartphone series, the Pixel 6, will sport an in-house chip called Tensor. Critical to the chip’s design are artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning features enabled by the system-on-chip (SoC) silicon, which the company said will improve speech recognition and camera quality.
“Tensor was built for how people use their phones today and how people will use them in the future,” the company wrote in a blog post. “As more and more features are powered by AI and ML it’s not simply about adding more computing resources, it’s about using that ML to unlock specific experiences for our Pixel users.”
Google’s current smartphone series, the Pixel 5, uses the mid-range Qualcomm Snapdragon 765G system-on-chip, which consists of eight Kryo 475 cores, an Adreno 620 GPU and a Hexagon 696 DSP.
Google CEO Sundar Pichai tweeted his excitement about the announcement, stating the Tension chip has been “in the making” for four years. “Tensor builds off of our two decades of computing experience,” he wrote, “and it’s our biggest innovation in Pixel to date.”
Google is not the first technology manufacturer to trade in a third-party SoC for an in-house model. Last year, in a departure from Intel, Apple revealed the M1, its first in-house silicon chip that is now present in its latest computers.
The upcoming Pixel, expected to launch later this year, will also have an improved user interface and camera design, as well as the most layers of hardware security in any phone on the market, according to Google.
