Washington: American tech giant Google has been making in-house custom processors for years now, but most of those efforts have been limited to machine learning or cloud data processing purposes.
According to Mashable, in contrast, the Pixel 6’s Google Tensor will be the company’s first application processor or AP intended to perform the same functions as a Qualcomm Snapdragon or Apple A chipset. While the jury is still out on whether it will be a success or a flop, it seems that Google is already working on expanding its in-house silicon to other devices as well.
Sources have revealed that Google is developing a similar processor intended for Chrome OS notebooks and tablets and has plans to launch the silicon in about two years.
At this point, the technical details of this mysterious Chromebook chipset are practically non-existent, but the Google Tensor’s specs could probably give an idea of what to expect.
Of course, smartphones and Chromebooks have different processing needs, and Google will have ramp-up efforts if it wants to produce a more powerful Arm-based processor.
Although this development isn’t really surprising for a company of Google’s ambition, the timing of it could be questionable. The global chip shortage is most likely pushing bigger chip developers like Intel, AMD, Qualcomm, NVIDIA, and others to fiercely compete for production capacity.
Joining the mix means that Google will now have to fight harder to get its chips made, presuming the situation doesn’t iron out soon enough.
That said, using an in-house processor does have the benefit of controlling everything and integrating hardware and software better, but it doesn’t come without its own drawbacks.
Larger amounts of R&D resources will need to be poured into the development of the chip for extended periods. Now Research and Development is certainly Google’s forte, but the standard of its hardware products might still leave some doubting the probabilities of the Google Tensor to make it big in the smartphone world, as per Mashable.
