It’s already known that Samsung will fabricate the Tensor G4 for the Google Pixel 9. But fresh reports coming from South Korea, Samsung’s home country, suggest that Google has just submitted an order to Samsung Foundry for the Tensor G4 chip to be used in next year’s Pixel 9 and Pixel 9 Pro.
As noted, this was already known to many of us who keep tabs on such developments. But what we didn’t know at the time is the fabrication process Samsung Foundry intends to use for the Tensor G4 chipset. This is no more, at least if the latest reports are to be believed.
Tensor G4 to use superior SF4P (3rd-gen 4nm) process
Samsung will reportedly fabricate the Tensor G4 using the SF4P (3rd-generation 4nm) process, an upgraded version of the Tensor G3 fabrication process. This process is expected to improve performance and efficiency of the Tensor G4 compared to the Tensor G3’s 2nd-gen 4nm process. It’s also the same SF4P process used for the Exynos 2400 that is expected to power Samsung’s upcoming Galaxy S24 and Galaxy S24+ units. Samsung revealed some details of the Exynos 2400 at the SLSI Tech Day event in the US a few weeks ago, and it’s obvious that the company’s heavy focus on AI and generative AI aligns perfectly well with Google’s vision for future Pixel phones.
According to Samsung, the Exynos 2400 brings 70% faster CPU performance, over 14x faster AI processing, and improved gaming and raytracing performance, the latter courtesy of the Xclipse 940 GPU that is based on AMD’s latest RDNA3 GPU architecture. The Tensor G4 is rumored to ship with a Cortex-X4 CPU, Cortex-A720, Cortex-A520 CPU cores and the Immortalis-G715 GPU. But neither Google nor Samsung has confirmed any of these details. But we can only hope that the Tensor G4 will also feature similar or better improvements offered by the Exynos 2400, although nothing is confirmed.
Tensor G4 on Pixel 9 will be a minor upgrade over Tensor G3
In September, Android Authority exclusively reported that Tensor G4 will be codenamed “Zuma Pro” and that it will only be a minor upgrade over the Tensor G3, codenamed “Zuma.” Apparently, it’s expected to use an updated version of the same G3 development board, which pretty much aligns with the latest developments coming from Korea. But for now, none of this has been confirmed by either Google or Samsung, so it remains speculative.