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Google Hires Key Apple Chip Architect To Build Custom Chips For Pixel Phones (variety.com)
A recent hire at Google indicates big changes are coming for future versions of the Google's Pixel phone. Manu Gulati, an Apple micro-architect who worked on the company's chip development for nearly eight years, has just joined Google. From a report: Gulati started working at Apple in 2009, and was instrumental to the company's efforts to build custom chips for the iPad, the iPhone and Apple TV. Apple began using its own chips in 2010, starting with the introduction of the iPad in 2010, which was powered by the company's A4 chip. To this day, the company uses custom-designed microchips for each of their devices, which make it possible to optimize processors both for performance and energy consumption. In the industry, these integrated chips for mobile devices are also known as SoCs, or "systems on a chip." In contrast, Google relied on a chip designed and manufactured by Qualcomm when it introduced its first Pixel phones last fall. The same chip is being used by a number of other Android phone manufacturers, including HTC, LG, Lenovo and Asus -- all of which goes to say that these phones all offer very similar performance specs. Qualcomm has become the de facto-manufacturer for higher-end Android phone chips, making it harder for the companies to differentiate their devices from one another.
If working for the same company for 7 years and a bit sounds like an extraordinary achievement, then I weep for the future.
They won't be able to charge premium prices forever.
Yeah, let's all race to the bottom. Afterall, it has worked out so well for the quality of PeeSees...
I doubt the mainstream market consumers would want to buy a Pixel phone when it only will be supported up to two years after it's initial launch. Google is taking planned obsolescence to a new level! Buy a premium pixel phone on a two year payment plan and as soon as it is paid off it is obsolete and one will need to start looking to purchase a new one with little hope of reselling their current phone for any meaningful value.
Google is a fickled company and all of their services and products have short abrupt lifespans.
If a nation expects to be ignorant and free, in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be-T J
Has the performance of Apple's chips outpaced Qualcomm's so much that Google will see any major improvement from making their own custom?
Yes. You buy an IP license from ARM. This gives you the right to modify and sell ARM-based-architecture products to customers. You can even modify the architecture enough that it is no longer compatible with other ARM based products if you choose. What Google will do here is optimize the software to their very specific hardware making Pixel with Google SoC faster, and more memory efficient, than HTC/Motorola/Samsung with SnapDragon/Exynos.
Google doesn't have the numbers to justify custom chips. Samsung does. Apple does. Huawei seem to have it. But Google I highly doubt it.
Perhaps they want server chips? They already use google designed security chips and ASICs.
Every chip maker with IP has SoCs, that's nothing special. Usually no one worries about this since only the operating system needs to know about the special features whereas the bland applications remain relatively portable. Even if they go to an extreme to add new instructions (so very rarely needed or desired) these aren't going to be things used by the application layer.
If you're referring to the numbers after the dollar-sign, I think they do...
It has. We're you supposed to be sarcastic?
I meant good for the customers, though. And I mean over the long term, i.e. the last 30 years. Even Apple had to eventually give it up and adopt defacto standard commodity components.
Perhaps Google wants to free hardware developed by this guy to the Android hardware base in the same way they free Android. I.e. have him developing flagship hardware that becomes a reference design for all the Android hardware shops eventually. It isn't that far off to recognize a big point of the Nexus product line has always been to act as a reference design. Pixel can be used that way as well. Google benefits from all vendors who roll out Android-based products.
Google should have hired Apple's chief marketing or design officer, not any chief [technical role] officer. Apple products aren't wildly bought because of superior performance, but because of amazing branding and design. In many respects, Android is more capable than Apple. Another wasted effort by Google.
Fast Federal Court and I.T.C. updates
You can even modify the architecture enough that it is no longer compatible with other ARM based products if you choose
No you can't. ARM will not sell a license that permits you to change the ISA for any price: they saw what happened with fragmentation with the MIPS market and have no desire to commit suicide in the same way. You can add custom interrupt controllers, UARTs and DMA engines, which makes porting an OS a bit harder but is invisible to userspace (and to the compiler). You can also add custom coprocessors, which every SoC vendor does (for example, a lot have face detection as a dedicated logic block: you DMA an image from the camera to the block and then read back a list of rectangles from an I/O register). Apple's chips also have a smaller ARM core that has private memory that is not readable by the main core for storing encryption keys, so that a compromised device can be forced to encrypt or decrypt things for the attacker, but can't leak the keys.
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