Shocking Pixel 6 rumor lists Google SoC with two ARM X1 CPU cores

• Google's best image of the Pixel 6 Pro. [credit: Google ]

What in the world is going on?

Google is building the Pixel 6, and with it, the company is dumping Qualcomm and introducing its first in-house main SoC (with help from Samsung): the "Google Tensor SoC," aka "Whitechapel." Other than some talk about Google's special AI sauce, there's hasn't been much info about the core parts of Tensor like, say, the CPU. A reasonable expectation for a company building its first SoC is that it won't be too ambitious—we would expect Google to play within the guardrails set up by ARM, and after shipping a modest, cookie-cutter SoC, the company would learn from its first design and iterate. But a new report from XDA Developers' Mishaal Rahman claims that even with its first design, Google isn't afraid to blaze its own trail in SoC design.

Recall how ARM SoCs generally come with three tiers of CPU cores: a big CPU for bursty processing tasks like app-launching, medium cores for sustained performance, and small cores for background duty and low-power processing. Rahman says he has a source with a real-life Pixel 6 Pro and offers the following CPU specs: two 2.8GHz Cortex-X1 cores, two 2.25GHz Cortex-A76 cores, and four 1.8GHz Cortex-A55 cores.