A system-on-chip (SoC) from Google and Samsung for AI inference processing in smartphones. The Tensor chip made its first appearance in Pixel 6 smartphones in 2021. Pixel Tensor chips contain the CPU, GPU and TPU (Tensor Processing Unit) along with all required circuits in a smartphone. See
SoC.
The Tensor chip superseded separate dedicated Edge TPUs, called "Neural Cores," in Pixel 4 phones. See
Pixel phone.
Not the TPU
Although they are both called Tensor chips, the Pixel Tensor chip is not the same as the Tensor Processing Unit (TPU). The Tensor SoC is a smartphone chip whereas the TPU is a custom-built chip used in Google datacenters (see
Tensor Processing Unit). See
Tensor core and
TensorFlow.