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Report: Google Wants To Design Its Own Smartphone Chips (arstechnica.com)
An anonymous reader writes: Google has been stepping up its efforts to build higher quality Android phones, and one thing holding it back is Qualcomm's SoC technology. According to two reports in The Information (paywalled: [1], [2]) Google is now looking for other partners, and may even jump into chip design itself. The company has already done some design work, hoping to co-develop it with a manufacturer. "The new chips are reportedly needed for future Android features that Google hopes to release 'in the next few years.' By designing its own chips, Google can make sure the right amount of horsepower gets assigned to all the right places and remove bottlenecks that would slow down these new features. The report specifically calls out 'virtual and augmented reality' as use cases for the new chips."
Another big area Google wants better hardware for is video processing tech. The article notes, "Qualcomm has a near monopoly on Android SoCs, but it is more marketing driven than performance driven and has been doing a disservice to the mobile space lately. It rushed to get 64-bit support out the door when it was beaten to the punch by Apple, which resulted in the very hot Snapdragon 810 SoC."
Another big area Google wants better hardware for is video processing tech. The article notes, "Qualcomm has a near monopoly on Android SoCs, but it is more marketing driven than performance driven and has been doing a disservice to the mobile space lately. It rushed to get 64-bit support out the door when it was beaten to the punch by Apple, which resulted in the very hot Snapdragon 810 SoC."
then I have a bridge to sell you. No fucking way.
I can't wait for Google's hardspyware.
... and fill the "Q" letter in their "Alphabet".
Report: Google Wants To Be One Step Closer To Taking Over The Wrold
I don't buy these reports at all. I just don't see it. I would imagine that Google would like to partner a bit closer with some of the chip vendors -- get some low power extensions added, more direct hardware accelerations of some of the effects that are done in Android, maybe help define some other extensions, etc. But I seriously doubt that they're looking to get into the chip design business. To do so they would have to buy a slew of chip designers, and we just haven't seen them hiring or acquiring in that arena.
Chip design is very hard and unforgiving. Google knows this, and can't be looking to jump into the business. They might want to help tailor something, but that would be about it...
Tracking you will be much more efficient. Built in, unblockable analytics.
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
All they have to do is contact Apple, I've heard they've been designing their own chips for a while now.
Fight for your bitcoins!
>Google has been stepping up its efforts to build higher quality Android phones
Then they shouldn't have ruined the Nexus 5X by giving it 4-year-old storage options and 4-year-old memory options and removing the wireless charging.
Just because some of us don't want a huge phone, doesn't mean we want weak specs. I was very disappointed because I have loved the Nexus 5 for two years and wanted to upgrade. Now, what is the point?
"The new chips are reportedly needed for future Android features that Google hopes to release 'in the next few years.' By designing its own chips, Google can make sure the right amount of horsepower gets assigned to all the right places and remove bottlenecks"
Apparently there aren't enough cores dedicated to stealing the end users personal data. They definitely need to fix this.
Qualcomm has a near monopoly on Android SoCs, but it is more marketing driven than performance driven and has been doing a disservice to the mobile space lately.
1. Qualcomm does not now have, nor has it ever had, a monopoly.
Samsung (which has consistently maintained a double-digit share of the world smartphone market) tends to use their own Exynos line. Other brands often use SoCs from upstart Chinese brands, like Hisilicon or MediaTek - especially, but not exclusively, on low-end devices. Intel's Atom chips have slowly been gaining traction, as well.
2. As to Qualcomm's large market share being mostly marketing-driven - this is a half-truth, at best.
Prior to the sudden rush to go 64-bit, Qualcomm's Krait CPU designs were very competitive. Although the CPU and GPU performance of their latest SoCs isn't that impressive compared to the competition, they still retain the edge which was the actual cause of their success in the first place: top-notch cellular modems.
Their excellent modems are the cause of their dominance in the U.S. smartphone market, where the LTE cellular network roll-out started earlier than in most of the rest of the world. This is also why their presence in tablets is significantly rarer: most tablets don't need a cellular modem.
"Qualcomm has a near monopoly on Android SoCs"
What about Mediatek, Samsung (Exynos SoCs in many of their top-selling phones and tablets), the Chinese fabless semicons like Rockchip, Allwinner, etc, even Intel (Asus Zen phones/tablets)? Statistics please without qualifiers like, a near monopoly on tablets sold by LG, Moto, and so-and-so company.
These pukes make up some sensational shit 3 or 4 times a year, get it re-blogged on all the Android and many tech sites and morons subscribe to read the bullshit stories...
Nothing to see here, move along.....
The fastest Qualcomm chip can't beat an over two year old iPhone 5 in single threaded performance. Multicores are nice, but many things rely on single thread performance.
The thing is, Google doesn't make enough of anything to make it worthwhile to do this. You gotta make a gazillion chips to break even. Unless they plan to sell them to the Android OEMs... hmmm...
They would possibly have a handset out that doesn't have useless apps loaded by default that you can't remove with stock OS.
That would mean that Android would be a lot more secure as well. The carriers have more interest in helping the government spy on their customers than anything else.
We talk about Google as though it is a single monolithic entity. But Google is so big and so vast it would be more correct to say that some project manager manged to get approval of a chip design project or some manager decided to fund a technology demonstrator.
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
Qualcomm may hold a near monopoly, but Android runs so much smoother on Atom chips. I switched from a galaxy S5 (snapdragon 801) to an Asus ZenFone 2 (Atom 3580) and it's a world of difference. That's not only due to touchwiz, also compared to CM and other custom roms. Intel has done a great job of optimizing Android for their x86 processors. Google should just partner with the experts: Intel.
You don't want your CPU directly serving you ads?
Do you have an Android phone now? If not, no one cares about your opinion on this. If so, why on earth would you be more worried about a Google chip than a Google ENTIRE OPERATING SYSTEM?
Many continue to under estimate it.
Right, because it's totally as easy to change the CPU as it is to install cyanogenmod.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
And it's totally as easy to implement an entire TCP/IP stack, file system, memory, and app code scanner in hardware that would be able to report information to Google without ANY OS/driver support.
If you don't know what you're talking about, consider the option of not talking.
And if you are going to post nonsense as AC, consider the option of not posting.
You keep doing it...
We're in a constant rush to get a better processor in to a smartphone, and yet the current gen chips are still heavily underutilized. I have an old Galaxy S2 i9100 in my desk that still performs well enough to do all modern tasks. My aging HTC M8 which is coming up on its second birthday is still as zippy as ever.
What exactly are we racing towards more powerful phone hardware to do?
BeauHD. Worst editor since kdawson.
why on earth would you be more worried about a Google chip than a Google ENTIRE OPERATING SYSTEM?
Because Google publishes the code to their operating system, but they're not going to publish the netlists for their processors. The latest intel processors have TPM built into the CPU, and they even have voice recognition software built into the CPU that is still powered even when the machine is ostensibly asleep, allegedly for the purpose of waking the machine up. Is that what you want in your phone?
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
There are two items missing from that analysis, worth $5.5 billion.
First, Motorola had $3 billion in the bank. When Google acquired Motorola, they aquired those bank accounts. Second, Motorola had paid $2.5 billion too much in taxes, deferring their losses until later. The last time I checked it wasn't entirely clear, but Google should have been able to reap those losses.
Before somebody gets their panties in a wad, that's money Motorola had paid in taxes, but wasn't actually owed. Basically Motorola's tax refund.
See also https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AMD_K12
Because Google publishes the code to their operating system, but they're not going to publish the netlists for their processors
They publish the code to the basic operating system - not the drivers. You know, the drivers that control all of the hardware features of the SoCs? It's pretty irrelevant in that case whether it's hardware/firmware/driver software (a lot of the "hardware" - especially things like TPMs - these days is really microcode loaded into separate controllers on the SoC anyway).
software built into the CPU that is still powered even when the machine is ostensibly asleep, allegedly for the purpose of waking the machine up. Is that what you want in your phone?
1) "software built into the CPU?" That doesn't even make sense.
2) More efficient standby and better battery life? That sounds good to me...
1) "software built into the CPU?" That doesn't even make sense.
It's hardware and software. Every modern CPU has microcode onboard, but these chips go beyond that. They have a whole little computer in the processor.
2) More efficient standby and better battery life? That sounds good to me...
No, it's just so that it can wake it up with a voice command. It's not more efficient or better battery life.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
1) "software built into the CPU?" That doesn't even make sense.
It's hardware and software. Every modern CPU has microcode onboard, but these chips go beyond that. They have a whole little computer in the processor.
And that whole little computer's software is NOT built into the CPU. It's SOFTWARE, pure and simple. The code it runs is loaded in via the firmware/drivers.
2) More efficient standby and better battery life? That sounds good to me...
No, it's just so that it can wake it up with a voice command. It's not more efficient or better battery life.
Yes, it is. Using a separate hardware component to do this means you don't need to run the power-hungry main CPU all of the time.