As per a report out of Variety, Google has hired former Apple micro-architect Manu Gulati who worked at the Jobs-Woz founded company for nearly eight years while developing new chipset technologies for custom processors and SoCs. Gulati’s LinkedIn page now reads “Lead SOC Architect at Google” as his job description, indicating one thing and one thing only: Google is probably trying to cook up their own custom chips to load in their products, specifically future Pixel phones.
Sure, I may sound like I’m jumping the gun here a bit, but hear me out. Google’s approach with last year’s Pixel was taking a direct shot at the iPhone 7 and 7 Plus. To only further development of the handset, why not make custom chips just like Apple does and control everything from the hardware to the software? Of course, this would mean dropping Qualcomm as a chipset partner who supplies the company with Snapdragon 821s for the Pixels, but Google would nevertheless have better chances of further optimizing their device for extreme battery life and performance efficiency.
This guess isn’t even that far-fetched. Many news outlets seem to agree from the same standpoint, while Google seems to be looking for a “Hardware Engineer, Mobile SoC Architect,” “Mobile SoC CPU Architect,” and “Mobile SoC Memory Architect” as well. These are all required team members for further developing systems on chips, therefore indicating Google is at least interested in following the direction the iPhone has laid down with its A-series chips.
Of course, this doesn’t mean we’ll see Google-built chipsets in this year’s Pixels. These handsets are expected to feature Snapdragon 83X-branded processors, but future Pixels may have the Google logo slapped on them. Who knows? Right now, everything remains a mystery. But at least we know the mystery exists.
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