>In the very fundamentals of what an SoC is, the Google Tensor closely follows Samsung’s Exynos SoC series. Beyond the usual high-level blocks that people tend to talk about in an SoC, such as CPUs, GPUs, NPUs, and other main characteristics, there’s the foundational blocks of a chip: these are the fabric blocks and IP, the clock management architecture, power management architecture, and the design methodology of the implementing those pieces into actual silicon. While on paper, a Samsung Exynos, a MediaTek Dimensity or a HiSilicon Kirin, or even a Qualcomm Snapdragon (on the CPU side) might have similar designs in terms of specifications – with the same high-level IP such as Cortex CPU or Mali GPUs from Arm – the chips will still end up behaving and performing differently because of the underlying SoC architecture is very different.
In the case of the Tensor, this “chassis” builds upon the IP Samsung uses on their Exynos SoCs, utilizing the same clock management and power management architecture. Going further up in the IP hierarchy we find additional similarities among high-level IP blocks, such as memory controllers, fabric IP, PHY IP for all kinds of externally facing interfaces, and even the larger IP functional blocks such as ISP or media decoders/encoders. The fun thing is that these things are now publicly scrutinizeable, and can be compared 1:1 to other Exynos SoCs in terms of their structures.
By which you mean "rebranded Samsung Exynos"?