Ron Amadeo / Intel
It sounds like this custom Google SoC powered Pixel is really going to happen. 9to5Google, which has versions from about a year ago, reports that the Pixel 6 is expected to ship with Google’s custom “Whitechapel” SoC instead of a Qualcomm Snapdragon chip.
The report reads’ Google refers to this chip as’ GS101 ‘, with’ GS ‘ potential short for “Google Silicon.” It is also noted that the chip will be shared across the two Google phones currently under development, the Pixel 6 and something like a “Pixel 5a 5G.” 9to5 says that they looked at documentation indicating that Samsung’s SLSI division (Team Exynos) is involved, consistent with Axios’ previous report that the chip was’ designed in collaboration with Samsung ‘and should be built on Samsung’s 5pm foundry line. 9to5Google says that the chip will have a number of similarities with Samsung Exynos, including software components. “
XDA developers say it can confirm the report, saying: “According to our source, it appears that the SoC will include a 3-cluster setup with a TPU (Tensor Processing Unit). Google is also referring to its next Pixel devices as “well-equipped phones,” which we believe refers to the fact that they have an integrated Titan M security chip (codenamed ‘Citadel’). ‘ ‘A’ 3-cluster setup ‘would be something like the Snapdragon 888, which has three CPU core sizes: a single large ARM X1 core for large single-threaded workloads, three medium Cortex A78 cores for multicore work , and four Cortex A55 cores for background work.
The Pixel 6 should be out somewhere in Q4 2021, and Pixel phones always leak heavily before it starts. So I’m sure we’ll see more of this soon.
Reasonable expectations of Whitechapel
It’s easy to get overwhelmed by Google’s first internal smartphone SoC – “Google is ready to take on Apple!” the headlines will no doubt scream. However, the fact is that Apple is a $ 2 billion hardware company and that the iPhone is the biggest product, while Google is an advertising company with a hardware division as a small project. Whitechapel will give Google more control over its smartphone hardware, but Google’s personal chips in the past have not really set the world on fire, so it’s reasonable to temper expectations for the company’s first generation SoC.
Google’s consumer hardware team has already shipped several custom chips, and I do not know if you can name one of their world beats:
- The Pixel Visual Core in the Pixel 2 and 3 was a custom camera processor created using Intel. Visual Core helped with HDR + processing, but Google was able to achieve the same image quality on the Pixel 3a, which did not have the chip.
- The Pixel Neural Core in the Pixel 4 was spun out of the company’s Tensor Processing Unit (TPU) AI accelerator efforts and did a similar job of doing camera and AI voice recognition work. It was unimportant enough to just completely cut off from the Pixel 5.
- There was the slide for detecting aerial gestures, Soli Project, on the Pixel 4. It was a radar-on-a-slide concept that Google originally set up to detect “sub millimeter movements of your fingers”, but by the time it was commercialized, it could only be large , arm- waving gestures. The feature still exists today in the new Nest Hub, for sleep detection, but it was not good enough to jump to the Pixel 5.
- The company’s Titan M Safety Disc works as the secure element in some Pixel phones. Google says it’s making the Pixel phones safer, though an approximately equivalent secure element also comes with a Qualcomm chip, or at least the company has never shown a tangible difference.
I think the biggest benefit we will see from a Google SoC is an extended update timeline. Android updates are going to be much smoother if you get support from the SoC manufacturer, but Qualcomm is dropping all of its chips to the three-year mark for major updates. This lack of support makes updates significantly more difficult than it should be, and today Google is drawing the line over updates. With Qualcomm out of the way, there are no excuses for Google for not complying with Apple’s five-year iPhone update policy. With a custom SoC, Google will have complete control over how long it can update devices.
At the moment, Google is embarrassed to offer less support for its devices than Samsung, which now offers up to three years of major updates (the Qualcomm maximum) and four years of security updates, while Google offers only one year fewer security updates. This is a strange position for Google to be, which used to lead the ecosystem in hardware support. Google may not have immediately agreed with Samsung as it awaits the Pixel 6 launch, where it will announce dramatically longer support timelines thanks to its own chip?
Competing in the SoC business is difficult
Except for easier updates, I do not know that we can expect much from Whitechapel. Many Android manufacturers have now made their own chips, with varying levels of success. Samsung has the Exynos line. Huawei has its HiSilicon chips. Xiaomi made the Surge S1 SoC in 2017, recently launched the Surge C1 camera chip in the Xiaomi Mi Mix Fold, and it invested in a silicone designer. Oppo is also working on the development of internal chips. None of the existing efforts could significantly beat Qualcomm, and most of these companies (except Huawei) still choose Qualcomm over their own chips for key devices. Everyone, even Qualcomm, relies on the same company, ARM, for its CPU design, so there is not much room for difference between them. When everyone uses an ARM-CPU off-the-shelf design, the most important areas of distinction are the GPU and the modem, two areas in which Qualcomm excels are therefore picked up for most important devices.
The companies that take hardware seriously are doing their best to separate themselves from the basic CPU design of ARM and rather design their own core based on the ARM instruction set. Apple dominates the performance of the mobile CPU thanks to the acquisition of an entire semiconductor company, PA Semi, in 2008. Qualcomm is doing its best to catch up and buy Nuvia, a chip design company owned by some of the former Apple companies. disk designers were established. and he plans to send his internally designed CPUs by 2022. Google has made a few rental designs for chips, but these are split between the separate hardware and server teams, and they pale in comparison to buying an entire company. If even Qualcomm is not currently shipping custom chips, I see no way Google is using anything about the standard ARM CPU design.
Google’s GPU and modem solutions will be of great interest. There are not many GPU designs to go around. Qualcomm has its own Adreno division that it bought years ago from ATI. Samsung has an agreement with AMD for its future GPUs, but I doubt it would be expected in its Google partnership. If this chip is really Exynos-adjacent, Samsung and many other soC vendors are also going with off-the-shelf ARM Mali GPUs, which are usually not competitive with what Qualcomm offers. Samsung signed the AMD partnership for a reason!
Imagine that Google’s SoC has a modem on board is a challenge. You may not normally integrate a modem into your SoC unless you own the modem design, and Google does not own a modem IP. Samsung has made chips with 5G modems on board, but they do not usually come to the US, so a Samsung modem should share the design with Google and bring it to the US for the first time. Qualcomm is, of course, the king of strong arms companies with its modern IP and keeps competitors outside the US, and is also generally a leader in modern technologies such as 5G. Apple has so far succeeded with separate cellular modems – today the iPhone 12 comes with a discrete Qualcomm modem for 5G, which is probably the most likely option for Google. Apple also bought the modem division of Intel for a billion dollars, indicating that it is working towards modem technology.
Along with the usual CPU / GPU / modem options, Google could also include some camera and AI species sauce in the form of some sort of co-processor (hopefully we get the Pixel’s first camera sensor upgrade in four years). Google is also likely to include a Titan security chip. Even if that was the case, I can not imagine it making a big difference compared to something like shipping with a low-quality GPU or modem. Google has never in the past shown a strong advantage to the end user of its custom silicone, just a whole lot of hype.
It’s hard to be positive about Google’s SoC future when it looks like the company is not doing the big money acquisitions and licensing transactions that Apple, Qualcomm and Samsung are doing. But this is at least a start.