The Pixel 2's Dormant 'Visual Core' Chip Gets Activated In Latest Android Developer Preview (techcrunch.com)

The Google Pixel 2 and Pixel 2 XL both feature a custom Intel "Visual Core" co-processor, which is meant to improve speed and battery life when shooting photos with Google's HDR+ technology. The chip has been hanging out in the phone not really doing much of anything -- until now. TechCrunch reports of a new developer preview of Android 8.1 due out today that puts the chip to use. "The component is expected to further improve the handsets' cameras, which were already scoring good marks, production issues aside." From the report: According to the company, Pixel Visual Core has eight image processing unit (IPU) cores and 512 arithmetic logic units. Using machine learning, the company says it's able to speed things up by 5x, with one tenth of the energy. Access to the chip, combined with the Android Camera API means third-party photo apps will be able to take advantage of the system's speedy HDR+. Sounds swell, right? Of course, this is still just an early preview, only available to people who sign up for Google's Beta program. That means, among other things, dealing with potential bugs of an early build. Google wouldn't give us any more specific information with regards to when the feature will be unlocked for the public, but it's expected to arrive along with the 8.1 public beta in December.

Comments

Re:Already caught up to Windows 8.1?

[KiloByte]

Then, after mysteriously missing Android 9, expect Android 10 that spies on you all the time.

Oh, wait...

Cameraphones still take poor pictures

[Anonymous Coward]

Hey I know Google means well, but this is still just a damn cameraphone with a tiny sensor, lossy image compression. HDR+ in a cameraphone is like saying a 4K screen is better than a 720p one for playing 720p video. Garbage In, Garbage Out.

Re:Cameraphones still take poor pictures

[im_thatoneguy]

HDR+ in a cameraphone is like saying a 4K screen is better than a 720p one for playing 720p video.

No it's like saying a 4k screen is better than a 720p one for 4k video.

HDR+ increases the dynamic range of the sensor. The 3 most important metrics of an image are: Dynamic range\Noise (check), Color Rendition and Sharpness. Cameraphones are already plenty sharp, nearly all of the top camera phones shoot DNG uncompressed RAW and now they're implementing improved HDR modes to extended the dynamic range.

I own an 8k RED camera but almost all the photos I take are on my smartphone because the image is reasonably good. If I had one request for smartphone sensors it would be "more dynamic range" aka HDR+.

Re:Cameraphones still take poor pictures

[Anonymous Coward]

That and using an 8k RED for photos is a PITA

Re:Cameraphones still take poor pictures

[interkin3tic]

Garbage In, Garbage Out.

That applies to subject matter much much much more than sensor size. And given most of us carry smartphones all the time and full-frame cameras almost never, the content is better for cell phones.

By all means, carry a camera with you. You may be surprised to realize that google activating hdr enhancements in their phone doesn't affect your ability to do that. It probably won't even decrease the number of people who are impressed with how much better your photos are than the camera phone. Hard to go below zero after all.

Re:Cameraphones still take poor pictures

[Anonymous Coward]

Increasing DR thorugh software...? That's new (or more likely - they don't but it's marketing bs, buT they probably do some tonemapping that makes it look a bit nicer but without any real DR improvement)

Re:Cameraphones still take poor pictures

[Anonymous Coward]

Cameraphones are already plenty sharp

Uh, have you actually looked at 100% zoom of the images most camera phones produce? If you had you would not post something like this. There are very few camera phones that produce good quality, sharp images. The Pixel line and iPhones are about it in this department. Some phones that are even heralded as "good" cameras produce absolute shit (I'm looking at you LG V20), even when compared to images from phone cameras of a decade ago, thus proving that most people are wholly incapable of judging image quality.

Re:Cameraphones still take poor pictures

[Bert64]

Camera phones tend to lack optical zoom, and digital zoom is largely pointless (basically cropping)...
For a fixed range they're not too bad, you'll need a pretty highend camera with some decent lenses to beat a modern smartphone.

Re:Cameraphones still take poor pictures

[JackieBrown]

My wife fancies herself as an amateur professional photographer and I have to keep explaining the uselessness of digital zooming. Not only is it useless, it limits your editing afterwards. Unless you just need a quick "take the photo and never edit it" it's a waste of a good shot.

I got her a camera with an optical zoom which has made a good compromise for her desire to want an instantly done, ready to share picture that she can still edit later.

Re:Cameraphones still take poor pictures

[dfghjk]

"HDR+ increases the dynamic range of the sensor."

No it doesn't. Dynamic range of the sensor is fixed.

"Cameraphones are already plenty sharp..."

Says who? Small sensors and cheap lenses are only "plenty sharp" to non-discriminating users.

"...early all of the top camera phones shoot DNG uncompressed RAW and now they're implementing improved HDR modes to extended the dynamic range"

Shooting RAW disables post-processing during acquisition, rendering your comments on HDR moot.

"I own an 8k RED camera..."

You may own one, and you may not, but owning one doesn't mean you know anything about photography. Your comments say otherwise.

Re:Cameraphones still take poor pictures

[Bitmanhome]

digital zoom is largely pointless (basically cropping)

Digital zoom is actually quite useful, you should try it. You'll find the resulting photos, though fuzzy, are actually perfectly reasonable.

And if you're shooting video, a modern phone will give you 2x digital zoom with no loss in quality. i.e. My Samsung has a 4k sensor, so when shooting 2k video I can zoom in up to 2x with no loss of quality, and even a bit more with no objectionable loss in quality.

Digital zoom lets you capture your artistic intent right now, while the opportunity exists. It's certainly not the *best* picture you can get, but it's better than nothing. You'll find you're more often happy that you got the picture, than unhappy at the reduced quality.

Shark jumping tipping point

[Anonymous Coward]

I figure there's two types in Google right now, a group that can barely code a "hello world" app, and a group that knows their subject in real detail, and they're in balance making Google at the tipping point.

Look at the Android phones and tablets. Google's Pixel 2: The plastic section starts at the same place as the volume button making it mechanically weak. That passed both design and testing phases. Or tablets that turns portrait when running a portrait app, forcing you to pick up the device, keyboard and all, when the portrait app runs on many devices normally a lot smaller. Why wouldn't you simply give it a phone sized portrait window? Why treat these as non-resizable in Chrome when they really support lots of different sized phones so are clearly resizeable!...... again dumbos in there. Or material design man, the radio button and checkbox that are both circles and you only know its action by pressing it to see what happens.... dumb design.

And yet here is a group that has been working with machine learning and design a chip to speed up the processing of their phone cameras.

None of the Google devices sell in any volume, they'll never match even a few % of iPhoneX's sales because there are too many dumbos and not enough geniuses there.

It's like they're at a tipping point.

Re:Shark jumping tipping point

[jellomizer]

Google thinks in software. Apple thinks in hardware.
This isn’t a bad thing but different approaches to problems.
Most facial recognition systems rely on smart software to look at the face and determine if it is you or not. Apple puts in some hardware to put IR dots on your face to make the software simpler.
The pixel camera has a lot of software features to counteract hardware limitations. Apple will try to put more hardware to the problem.
The hardware thinking is often leads to a more expensive product, that can be improved by better software in the future . While software thinking often come to peak ability much quicker requiring a hardware upgrade. However the product is cheaper.

Re:Shark jumping tipping point

[AmiMoJo]

Due to the form factor of a phone and the limited options available, everyone uses the same Sony sensors in their high end phones. Lens technology peaked years ago.

Most manufacturers use optical image stabilization, while Google uses digital. Results seem about the same for photos and for video digital is clearly superior, so some are starting to add digital to their optical systems when in video mode.

Photo quality wise it's all about software processing, since everyone has basically identical hardware. Some phones now have two cameras that combine images, but none produce results as good as Google's single camera+software. Google's HDR performance in particular is way ahead of anyone else, especially at night. Night shots are probably Apple's biggest weakness.

The other use for dual cameras "portrait mode", where the background is automatically blurred. Again, Google does it entirely in software and it seems to be better than any dual camera solution. Most of them, including Apple, struggle to find the edges of your head. It's a hard task, especially given the variety of hair and how thin/transparent it can get at the margins. Google claims to use AI, presumably Tensorflow.

Re:Shark jumping tipping point

[jellomizer]

From my understanding. Apple is better at making realistic pictures, while Google makes more photographic images. The duel camera and optical image stabilization does allow for more of the image to be available, while digital needs to cut off the margins.
However if you take the Apple extra hardware and use Google's software then you probably would get a world class product.

Re:Shark jumping tipping point

[jareth-0205]

Google's Pixel 2: The plastic section starts at the same place as the volume button making it mechanically weak

*looks at own Pixel 2*. *doesn't see any 'plastic' section*.

The back is metal covered in a plastic coating, so I don't really know what you're talking about. I definitely don't feel you should be so confident about what you're saying, though...

Or material design man, the radio button and checkbox that are both circles and you only know its action by pressing it to see what happens....

Again, no, the Material Design checkbox square. https://material.io/guidelines...

Re:You joke...

[Anonymous Coward]

It already is if you have it enabled. Just say "Ok Google, please f*ck me up the ass, thank you".

They couldn't get the phone done by launch

[Anonymous Coward]

Does not really instill much confidence, will wait and see how next iteration does and if they handle it better.

Re:They couldn't get the phone done by launch

[Anonymous Coward]

Perhaps they would have failed on the FCC regulation tests, if all the chips were enabled. Or the tests would just have revealed, that the Intel's spy-chip is active when it should not have been.

Cameraphones? Tablets are a joke

[Anonymous Coward]

As bad as phone cameras are, tablet cameras in particular seem to be stuck in the stone age, and the iPod Touch as well.

autocorrect

[Anonymous Coward]

That's all well and good, but can it auto-correct 'it' properly?

Re:You joke...

[Anonymous Coward]

Just have no mobile phone. POTS works for me!

Sounds like the ZiiLabs stem processors

[Anonymous Coward]

It sounds like the ZiiLabs stem processor technology that they purchased a few years ago. That was a few small CPU cores with hundreds of ALUs. It was amazing at the time they released it and when Intel borg'ed it I was wondering what happened to it!

Activate dormant hardware?

[Kazymyr]

Sure why not. There's no way this can go wrong right?

Re:Activate dormant hardware?

[Anonymous Coward]

Most likely thing to happen is it'll tank the battery life even further

Intel ME?

[mrwireless]

To what extent is this SOC comparable to Intel's management engine? Isn't Google basically putting a second computer in my computer? With all the risks that entails?

Re:Intel ME?

[Anonymous Coward]

And is Intel also going to run their software on my hardware in this case ?
I am gonna send them invoices for the use of my hardware.
Buininess is buisiness...

Re:Intel ME?

[ljw1004]

To what extent is this SOC comparable to Intel's management engine? Isn't Google basically putting a second computer in my computer? With all the risks that entails?

It's not comparable at all. It's completely unrelated. You presumably have a graphics card inside your computer? The graphics card is basically a second computer. It doesn't entail risks.

Re:Intel ME?

[swillden]

To what extent is this SOC comparable to Intel's management engine? Isn't Google basically putting a second computer in my computer? With all the risks that entails?

There are many computers inside your computer. The Intel ME is risky because it can take very low level control of the device, update software, etc. The Vision Core is just a graphics coprocessor, not something that can take over control of the device.

Of course, that would be unnecessary, since unless you've unlocked the bootloader and installed custom software, Google can already update your software, etc. Or if you have a Samsung device, Samsung can, etc.