Google could be taking a gaming gamble with the Pixel 10

Specifications for the Tensor G5 chip that will power the Google Pixel 10 have leaked, with exciting developments in the gaming and AI departments.

It’s long been bandied around that next year’s Google phones will be the first to run on entirely home-brewed silicon, with no assistance from Samsung. Now a detailed Tensor G5 spec dump from Google’s gChips division has emerged via Android Authority, and it seems to confirm that we’re in for some interesting changes.

The main difference with next year’s chip will see Google ditching its dependence on Arm Mali GPUs, which have powered all Pixel phones to date. For the Pixel 10 we’ll be getting a new GPU from Imagination Technologies, which is the company that Apple used before bringing its own chip design in-house.

In particular, the seven-core Arm Mali-G715 GPU found in both the Pixel 9 Pro and the Pixel 8 Pro will be making way for the dual-core IMG DXT. Little more is known about this new contender, though we do know that it’ll pack ray tracing support.

This is nothing new within the wider world of mobile chips – the Apple A18 Pro and Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 both support this advanced gaming graphics technique – but it will be a first for Pixel owners.

Another first will be support for GPU Virtualisation, which will allow graphics acceleration for applications running on a virtual machine. Google has been experimenting with virtualisation in such things as running Chrome OS on Android devices, so presumably this could be advantageous with future productivity features.

According to the leak, we shouldn’t be expecting a massive departure from the Pixel 9 when it comes to CPU performance. The Tensor G5 will be faster, but it’ll still pack the same single Arm Cortex-X4 performance core as the Tensor G4.

The key difference will be two addition mid clusters of a higher order, amounting to five Arm Cortex-A725 cores rather than the Pixel 9 / Tensor G4’s three Arm Cortex-A720 cores. To balance this out, there’ll be only two Arm Cortex-A520 small cores rather than the Pixel 9 / Tensor G4’s four.

Expect multi-core performance to take a positive bump as a result, but don’t hold your breath for any seismic improvements overall. With that said, there’s no clock speed information here, so it’s probably best to hold fire on any snap judgements.

As anyone who has bought a Pixel phone before will know, Google likes to hype up the AI performance of its custom chips, and the Pixel 10 / Tensor G5 will go big(ger) in this regard too. After the Pixel 9 / Tensor G4 pretty much held fast in the TPU stakes, the new set-up will boast a 40 percent boost in TOPS (Trillions of Operations Per Second), although Google’s own benchmarks suggest a 14 percent TPU performance bump overall.

Google’s Pixel phone line has never been a performance power-house, and its gaming performance has always been a step or two below the best. These new specs have us hoping for something more competitive from the Pixel 10.