Google designs its first chip in-house

[Newsfeed]

Google designs its first chip in-house

Google unveiled its first internally designed chip for consumer devices on Tuesday, the latest sign of the search engine’s hardware ambitions and a threat to its current semiconductor suppliers.

 

[Ockie]

It’ll be activated in coming months via a software update that will let other apps tap into the chip’s capabilities, the Alphabet Inc. unit said.

How would it be enabled via software if the hardware was only unveiled today and not in any devices to actually update via software?

 

[ponder]

How would it be enabled via software if the hardware was only unveiled today and not in any devices to actually update via software?

The hardware is already in the Pixel 2 phones, just lying dormant until google activates it.

 

[Thor]

Very interesting move.

 

[sajunky]

It means that hardware was made properly from the beginning.
Good job.

 

[ToxicBunny]

It means that hardware was made properly from the beginning.
Good job.

Never, its a Bitcoin mining ASIC processor.. I spoke to my mates at the GooglePlex.. Google needs new revenue streams.

 

[Ockie]

The hardware is already in the Pixel 2 phones, just lying dormant until google activates it.

Weird. I could have sworn in gsmarena it had a Qualcomm chip.

 

[ponder]

Weird. I could have sworn in gsmarena it had a Qualcomm chip.

It does, it uses a Qualcomm Snapdragon 835 SoC which is customised by google, it has extra stuff tacked on in silicone.



They added a ninth core A53, ARM Cortex-A53, with 8 core image processing unit (IPU) to handle the image processing.

 

[konfab]

How would it be enabled via software if the hardware was only unveiled today and not in any devices to actually update via software?

Technically, they could put an FPGA on the phone. That would allow them to reconfigure the hardware with a firmware update.
The iphone 7 had one for example:
https://www.forbes.com/sites/aarontilley/2016/10/17/iphone-7-fpga-chip-artificial-intelligence/#689df3ca3c69