Now we already caught wind of Google working on their own CPUs for their Pixel smartphones & Chromebooks. But now we got more details on the matter as it could arrive as early as this year for the Pixel 6 line.
According to the folks over at 9to5Google, the CPU is codenamed ‘Whitechapel’ and is said to ship w/ the Pixel 5a & the Pixel 6 due out this year. They wouldn’t be completely built in-house like their Titan M, Neural Core, & image processing chips. This would be an Arm-based GS101 SoC (system on a chip) processor but it is said to be built w/ Samsung’s Semiconductor + Exynos parts.
While the folks over at XDA Developers say that it will be a part of a 3-cluster setup w/ a TPU (Tensor Processing Unit) for machine learning – like their Neural Core chip on the Pixel 4 and an integrated security chip (new version of their Titan M CPU). No word as of yet if their dedicated image processing chip would return or not.
This would mean Google is closer to being ready to ditch Qualcomm for their mobile processors than we thought. Hopefully, this would bring Google closer to having more control like Apple does w/ hardware design, software, and processor. This could lead to a boost in speed, performance, and battery life across their Pixel phones & Chromebooks laptops.
We shall see if the dream can be become a reality this year.
