US tech giant Google is reported to be working on its own processor that could power the Pixel phones coming in 2021. According to Axios, the later version of that processor could be used in Google’s Chromebooks. With its own processor in place, Google could end reliance on third party vendors to develop hardware. Apple is already using its own processors in many of its devices.
The chip, codenamed ‘Whitechapel,’ could be an eight-core ARM processor manufactured using Samsung’s 5-nanometer process. The report in Axios further states that the processor could be optimised to run Google’s machine learning technology and a portion of the chip could also be used to improve Google Assistant’s performance.
Google already makes a few chips of its own designed to perform some other functions in its devices. For example, its Pixel phones come with a security chip called the Titan M, and the Pixel 4 launched last year uses Pixel Neural Core processor for photography.
Currently, Google uses Qualcomm processors and switching to its own processor would help Google improve the experience of any future hardware, the company might bring to its phones similar to the way Apple optimises it’s A-series chips to run iOS.
Last month, a report by XDA developers claimed that Google may not be using Qualcomm’s top-of-the-line Snapdragon 865 mobile platform in their 2020 flagship smartphones. The reason being that the Snapdragon 865 is expensive and it adds a lot of work in the R&D, and increases the total cost to manufacture a phone. Instead of using the Qualcomm Snapdragon 865, Google in its 2020 Pixel devices could use the Snapdragon 765G, which is a trimmed down from the Snapdragon 865.
