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Google hires a key Apple chip designer
- mtgx 9y agoI wonder if they plan to build an ARM CPU or a RISC-V CPU. https://riscv.org/membership/999/google/ https://riscv.org/membership/999/google/
- sweden 9y agoNo, they are working on their own SoC to launch it in the next Pixel phone or in the one after. They want to become like Apple and control their entire ecosystem all the way from the hardware to the software in their premium phones. They are tired of the current mess with all smartphone makers polluting the market with Android phones that stop being supported after a couple of years. Their target to have a full premium Google phone is around 2019. Source: wink wink
- frou_dh 9y agoSeems a bit slow on the uptake. It was clear in 2013 from what Apple did with the 5S that in-house CPU was a big win.
- rtx 9y agoDo they also plan to cater to the lower end.
- thechut 9y agoThe Apple A series processors are ARM based...
- acomjean 9y agoI think one of the confusing things is ARM holdings doesn't sell physical chips. They sell a spec (verlog code I believe) that can be turned into a chip. Add some usb, memory, video card, maybe wireless and you get a system on a chip.
- godelmachine 9y agoIn short - ARM licenses its architecture for which you pay a fee.
- CalChris 9y agoExcept that it isn't short. ARM licenses their architecture which you can implement but that implementation also must pass a verification test and you can neither add anything nor leave anything out. ARM also licenses IP cores in its traditional fabless role. There are about 15 architectural licensees. Apple and NVidia are architectural licensees. https://semiaccurate.com/2013/08/07/a-long-look-at-how-arm-licenses-chips/ https://semiaccurate.com/2013/08/07/a-long-look-at-how-arm-l... Samsung, Qualcomm and Texas Instruments license cores. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arm_Holdings#Licensees https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arm_Holdings#Licensees
- ethbro 9y agoARM sells many things, that many different customers use. One is a license run the ARM ISA, so you can design a chip from the ground up. Another is a license to produce a reference implementation of a single processor design. Others peripherals and options exist too. So, in short, a microprocessor architect might be needed to build an ARM chip, depending on how one was going about it.
- cmsj 9y agoand to be clear, what Apple has is the ISA license. Apple's ARM CPUs are not just the reference design from ARM. I'm not enough of a hardware person to know if they are modifying the design or have implemented the ISA from scratch, but their chips seem to be significantly faster than anyone else's so they're clearly doing something smart :)
- monocasa 9y agoThey've almost certainly designed their cores from scratch.
- puzzle 9y agoThe funny thing is that when Acorn spun off ARM some 25 years ago, Apple owned a chunk of the new company, since they used ARM6 for the Newton. The new chip's MMU was actually designed by Bob Welland, one of the fathers of Newton OS, for which he concocted the whole protection domain feature.
- detaro 9y agoIt seem fairly unlikely that they'd try to come up with their own CPU architecture for this.
- DanCarvajal 9y agoMy Pixel XL is the first Android phone I could see lasting me long enough to get to 2019.
- on_and_off 9y agoSame here with my pixel 2 XL .. I hope to keep it at least until 2020, maybe a bit more (with a battery replacement in the middle). I would have said the same of my Nexus 6P .. but it has many hardware problems that manifest after a while. Fingers crossed to do not see the Pixel do the same.
- jacksmith21006 9y agoSame with my Pixel 2 XL. So far the best smartphone I have owned. I now prefer Android over iOS and the Pixel 2 is as smooth as any Android phone I have ever used.
- Crontab 9y agoI hope you are right because I feel that the Android ecosystem is a quagmire.
- kevin_thibedeau 9y agoUnlike my Google Moto G that was unsupported after 18 months?
- sweden 9y agoThe problem with the current phones is that they are dependent on the SoC's designer for update support. If Qualcomm decides to phase out support for one of their SoCs, there is nothing that Google can do about it. This is the kind of situation that they are annoyed with.
- remir 9y agoI though this was no longer a problem with Project Treble?
- sweden 9y agoProject Treble will improve the situation indeed but Google is still keen in having control of the ecosystem like Apple.
- on_and_off 9y agoIt gives the tool for new oreo phones to handle this correctly, but it is still up to the OEM to do it.
- mr_toad 9y agoIt’s not just the carriers and manufacturers, Google doesn’t even support their own phones beyond a few years (e.g. the Nexus 5).
- bitmapbrother 9y ago3 years of OS and security updates is actually quite good for an Android phone relatively speaking. Qualcomm doesn't usually agree to support their SoC's for more than 2 years so getting an extra year out of Qualcomm must have been expensive. And therein lies the problem - Google has been beholden to Qualcomm to update their drivers for every major release of the OS. Perhaps this will change now that the Linux kernel has 6 years of LTS and Android 8 and onward now allow the OS to updated without modifying the kernel, but who knows. One interesting note is the length of support Intel has provided to the Nexus Player. First released in 2014 on Android 5 it recently received Android 8 in 2017. It's too bad Intel is out of the mobile SoC market because their level of support has been unparalleled by any SoC manufacturer.
- on_and_off 9y agoIt has been a rumor for ages but so far we are still waiting for this SoC :/
- tfha 9y agoI'd be worried about them doing to RISC-V what they did to Android: buy it, make it popular, add proprietary opcodes that substantially improve performance, get all major RISC-V chips in production using those opcodes, slowly change the spec and ecosystem over time to make the original open source project completely obsolete. :(
- aleden 9y agoIf you have a Pixel 2 XL, you can: Download the source code for its Linux kernel: https://android.googlesource.com/kernel/msm.git/+/android-4.4 https://android.googlesource.com/kernel/msm.git/+/android-4.... Compile it: export ARCH=arm64 export CROSS_COMPILE=aarch64-linux-gnu- make wahoo_defconfig make -j$(nproc) Build the userspace by looking up the correct source code : https://source.android.com/setup/build-numbers https://source.android.com/setup/build-numbers (e.g. branch android-8.1.0_r2): mkdir $AOSP_HOME cd $AOSP_HOME repo init -u https ://android.googlesource.com/platform/manifest -b android-8.1.0_r2 repo sync --jobs=$(nproc) source build/envsetup.sh lunch aosp_wahoo-userdebug make -j$(nproc) And then flash your phone by doing fastboot -w flashall, you'll have root access and everything. (omitted downloading some kernel modules for the hardware)
- throwaway2048 9y agoThis post is pure whitewash bullshit. "omitted downloading some kernel modules for the hardware" aka all the drivers, the actual things that make the hardware work, which are all closed source, and eventually will stop being updated (likely about 6 months from now) leaving you on a forever obsolete android release and kernel, full of exploitable holes.
- dmitrygr 9y agoProject Treble makes it so drivers do not get obsoleted
- pjmlp 9y agoNot at all, Project Treble makes it so, assuming that OEMs upstream their drivers, but as usually happens in the whole fragmentation story Google is only advising OEMs to do it, not enforcing it. People need to realize Project Treble will only improve Android, if Google has the guts to force OEMs to play ball, until then having a certified Treble device doesn't mean updates will be made available.
- ghufran_syed 9y agoDoesn't the word "poaching" in the title imply that the employee was somehow Apple's property? Wouldn't "Google hires a key Apple chip designer" be a clearer, less sensational way to put it?
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- perfmode 9y agoI mean, the employee had leased/rented/sold/whatever their labor output to apple and now google has taken over the lease/deed/contract/whatever. In a way, your employer does own something: rights to the output of your labor.
- csydas 9y agoStrictly speaking, yes, but it's a well known and used term to refer to the practice of somehow hiring an employee away from a company. The term is demeaning to employees, but the connotation is pretty well understood. It's not really meant to convey proper ownership, just that the employee was lured away.
- no29 9y agothe article doesn't make it clear but they're actually cooking him in boiling water.
- ringaroundthetx 9y agoOn a safari
- tzahola 9y agoMore like chrome now
- draw_down 9y agoYes. It’s a distasteful thing to write.
- thisisit 9y agoAside from the obvious clickbait title, the article is very light on detail and filled with speculation. The original referenced article is here (paywall): https://www.theinformation.com/google-ramps-up-mobile-chipmaking-with-talent-from-apple https://www.theinformation.com/google-ramps-up-mobile-chipma...
- drewg123 9y ago"Right now, its only in-house silicon is the Pixel Visual Core imaging chip inside the Pixel 2" This statement completely ignores the group making the TPU. Google has more hardware expertise than just the consumer electronics folks.
- puzzle 9y agoThere's a lot more. The article makes it sound like this is all recent, but the Visual Core was in the works for at least three years. Then there's the Titan security chip and the Lanai processor used in Google NICs. Google is heavily involved in RISC-V, through David Patterson, who also worked on the TPU and is, of course, famous for the Berkeley RISC that eventually turned into Sun's Sparc. It also has expertise in other areas like memory chips or more esoteric ones like silicon photonics. Then there is a bunch of former PA Semi folks and even an Alpha architect, Dick Sites, although none of those worked on CPU design at Google, AFAIK.
- dmoy 9y agoPatterson like Hennessy & Patterson?
- pavpanchekha 9y agoYes, same David Patterson.
- puzzle 9y agoYes. Hennessy is a Google board member, too. It's a small world.
- drivebycomment 9y agoDick retired last year. But your point still stands, as Google is flush with academic and industry veterans in processor design.
- jacksmith21006 9y ago
- CalChris 9y agoGoogle had earlier (well, 7 years earlier) bought AgniLux, a follow on company with people from PA Semi which had been bought by Apple. That looked an awful lot like an acquihire. Dunno if they went on to do TPU or what. https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2010/04/google-buys-secret-chip-startup/ https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2010/04/googl...
- puzzle 9y agoThey worked on Chrome hardware. Google is heavily involved in the development of the boards that end up in manufacturers' Chromebooks and Chromeboxes.
- baybal2 9y agoAMD's tragedy, the make brilliant engineers in house and have talent at picking good cadres, but very few of them will go to work on any greenfield development for them. The moment a cadre on a level of Keller or Bruno gets bored, they loose them
- gimmeminusnow4 9y agois Google and Apple only companies in this whole world anymore can create mobile phones ? Why is whole world following these 2 companies ? Is this the "internet / mobile phone" ghetto ? Almost like google and facebook, is there anybody who could leave these services and understand, they are created to spy you, just like your mobile phones.
- xj9 9y agowell, purism is trying, MSFT tried, Jolla tried. mobile is a tough market to crack! its expensive and the network effects that influence what people buy are pretty strong.
- jacksmith21006 9y agoGoogle and Apple have the only two mobile platforms so of course that is where focus will be.
- dboreham 9y agoThe cycle is complete: DEC and IBM are reborn, and the Intel business model is in retreat.
- bitmapbrother 9y agoGoogle and Microsoft both expressed concern about the potential Broadcom takeover of Qualcomm. And since Broadcom and Apple on on good graces one can't help but wonder Apple's influence in all of this especially when you consider the timing. If Broadcom does take over Qualcomm then Google needs to be prepared to pivot in the event Broadcom decides to take actions that are not aligned with Google's interests. I'd also like to see some real innovation in Android SoC's because there certainly hasn't been any from Qualcomm who's R&D strategy is now taking ARM's latest reference design, making a few modifications and calling it a day.
- papaver-somnamb 9y agoCan anyone layout a path to becoming as skilled in chip design as these people like John Bruno? As though I would be able to do a competent Verilog implementation of RISC-V or 68040 in my own workshop. As a hobby (back when I had the luxury of time) I designed several ALUs, and two CPUs featuring datapaths and register transfer control. I did them as digital circuit diagrams on paper, on breadboards (which teaches the valuable lessons of signal fanout, wire layout, debugging), and in squirrel (which teaches the value of good tooling, one way or another). I've toyed with VHDL, Verilog, and FPGAs, and am competent in assembly and C. I'm interested, but I don't know what the path forward looks like to gaining the chops that these famed designers have.
- DanBC 9y ago> As a hobby (back when I had the luxury of time) I designed several ALUs, and two CPUs featuring datapaths and register transfer control. I did them as digital circuit diagrams on paper, on breadboards (which teaches the valuable lessons of signal fanout, wire layout, debugging), and in squirrel (which teaches the value of good tooling, one way or another). I've toyed with VHDL, Verilog, and FPGAs Not an answer to your question, but I'd love to read some blog posts about this please.
- papaver-somnamb 9y agoThat's the luxury of time thing. If I was a recipient of universal basic income, it's the first item on my list. A series starting from grass roots leading to code-level manifestation and verification of landmark chips like MOS 6502, Zilog Z80 and onwards up to MIPS R4000, SuperSPARC, Intel 80486, Motorola 68040. And a deep dive to implementing a lisp-based OS and tooling to both run & compile itself, completing the circle. There is so much interesting about CPUs, from large architectural design considerations like machine type (Von-Neuman or Harvard) and MMUs through to minutiae like choice of instructions and the encoding of the instruction set, balancing the conflicting demands of instruction timing optimizations versus silicon space and power budget, math intrinsics, ... this rabbit hole runs deep. I'm starting to wonder if any one person is able to master all of the requisite topics, similar to the pseudo-fact that there is no one person who is able to manufacture a can of Coke from scratch. But, we can try, and that is where the fun is :)