Old chip components could put Pixel 8 at a disadvantage
Google's next in-house smartphone chip will reportedly not feature Arm's latest cores. This could put the rumored Pixel 8 at a disadvantage against the next crop of Android phones which will likely use the Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 chipset.
Google's proprietary chips for its smartphones are made in collaboration with Samsung. They are built around AI and machine learning and prioritize smart processing over raw power. So even though Google's best phones are fine for day-to-day operations, there aren't as blazing fast as Apple and Samsung's flagship phones.
Budding leaker Revegnus (@Tech_Reve) hints that the Tensor G3 will also lag behind the Apple A17 Bionic - which will fuel the forthcoming iPhone 15 Pro - and the Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Gen 3.
Pixel 8's Tensor G3 will be held back by old Arm CPUs
The leaker implies that the Tensor G3 will have one Arm Cortex-X3 running at 3.3 GHz, two Cortex-A715 cores clocked at 2.6 GHz, and four Cortex-A510 cores running at speeds of up to 2.3 GHz.
Arm is reportedly planning to bring out new cores this year. If the Pixel 8 uses last year's CPUs, it will be at a disadvantage compared to other Android handsets. Still, it would be a noticeable upgrade over the G2, which has two Cortex-X1 cores, two Cortex-A78 cores, and four Cortex-A55 cores.
Samsung will apparently manufacture the chip using its 4nm process. It is expected to be faster than the Qualcomm 8 Gen 2.
Meanwhile, the Snapdragon 8 Gen 3, which will arrive towards the end of the year, is rumored to have a new layout and new Arm CPUs. The chip is expected to have one primary core based on a new Arm Xn core codenamed Hunter, two Arm A7xx titanium cores, three Arm A7xx gold cores, and two A5xx cores codenamed Hayes.
The primary X4 core will reportedly run at 3.70GHz, which is a 15 percent faster clock speed than Snapdragon 8 Gen 2's Cortex-X3’s 3.20GHz frequency. Needless to say, this will improve the peak performance significantly.
Chinese site My Drivers speculates that the Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 could earn 1.5 million points on benchmarking site AnTuTu, surpassing the current top performer, which boasts a score of 1,308,126.
The chip will likely still not be able to beat Apple's chip. That's because the Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 will allegedly be based on TSMC's N4P process, whereas the A17 Bionic will be manufactured on the 3nm node.
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