Google may be working to develop a custom Tensor chip to power future Pixel Watch wearables, according to leaked documents.
The information comes from an Android Authority report citing leaked documents from Google’s gChips division. These documents have supplied information behind other recent Pixel leaks, including a deeper look at the company’s upcoming Tensor G5 and G6 smartphone chips and new camera features coming on the Pixel 10 and 11.
According to this latest leak, Google aims to have a Tensor chip for wearables in 2026 alongside the Pixel Watch 5. That’d be a notable shift for the Pixel Watch, which has so far not had much luck as far as chips go.
The first-gen Pixel Watch used an outdated Exynos system-on-a-chip (SoC), but Google made the jump to Qualcomm’s Snapdragon W5 Gen 1 platform for the Pixel Watch 2. That was a good move, but then Google reused that same chip in the Pixel Watch 3 and Qualcomm doesn’t appear to be shipping a W5 Gen 2 any time soon.
As such, it makes sense that Google is working a Tensor wearable chip into its roadmap. However, Android Authority’s report doesn’t give us a lot more information than that. The documents revealed that the wearable chip sports codename ‘NPT,’ possibly referencing Newport Beach since other Google chips in the document feature California beaches for codenames.
Beyond that, the document reveals a possible core configuration for Google’s wearable chip: 1x Arm Cortex-A78 core and 2x Arm Cortex-A55 cores. Both of those cores are quite old — the A55 dates back to 2017 — but that’s par for the course with wearables. Manufacturers love to use old cores on modern process nodes for wearables. (Qualcomm’s W5 chip, for example, uses 2012-era Cortex-A53 cores on a 4nm node.) Notably, Samsung’s Exynos W1000 chip sports a similar 1x A78 and 2x A55 layout.
Elsewhere, the document reportedly suggests that Google is considering using RISC-V as an alternative to ARM-based chips for its wearables. However, Android Authority pointed out that Google recently removed RISC-V from the Android kernel, though the company said it would continue supporting RISC-V despite the removal. Regardless, Google has a lot of work to do if it hopes to go the RISC-V route.
That’s about all we have to go on for now, which admittedly isn’t a lot. And given the Pixel Watch 5 is still several years away, it’s likely that things will change. Still, it’d be neat to see Google consolidate its chip efforts and offer Tensor across several of its devices.
Source: Android Authority
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