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There were few leaks suggesting Google might be working in their own ARM processor. Qualcomm is only other company capable to competing Apple SoC. They tried w

There were few leaks suggesting Google might be working in their own ARM processor. Qualcomm is only other company capable to competing Apple SoC. They tried with 8cx(7 watt) but was not very successfull. With Custom X1 cores they may be able to achieve good performance.

cbozeman 6y ago
I don't think anyone will need to worry about Google. As soon as they realize its actually hard, and as soon as they hit the slightest roadblock, they'll give up, like they literally do on every fucking product that isn't a huge instant hit that everyone fawns over.
- abakker 6y ago
  I don't know - imagine a chromebook, but with a custom SOC with compiler optimizations designed to improve battery life on auto-play video ad popups. Seems right up their alley /s
  - akmittal 6y ago
    I see Google moving from Advertisement model to Subscription based. They did same with YouTube.
- akmittal 6y ago
  Google is not really good at hardware, they tried high end phones but were not very successful. They realised that and moved to mid tier phones. More than performance they are focusing on creating a Google ecosystem where all their hardware and services integrate seamlessly.
  - cbozeman 6y ago
    Yeah, as it turns out, making exceptional shit from the ground up is really really tough. Hence the reason Google Fiber got laughed out of existence. Google thought everyone would just bend over backwards and laud their arrival. I guess they were shocked that it would require money and actual effort, like most difficult undertakings.
    - vlovich123 6y ago
      Contradictory evidence to your point is that they regularly design all kinds of data center Hw (famous for starting the whole paradigm of building data centers with consumer HW) and build best-in-industry ML accelerators (TPUs). Don’t mistake building and selling consumer HW with building components. Very different problems. The former is as equal parts art as it is engineering. Building your own CPU will be vastly simpler. Whether or not Google has the same level of coordination between HW and SW to have Android benefit so greatly, I don’t know. It’s also unclear how big a step building the CPU is for Google. Lots of talented people on that project. That being said, it’s already behind schedule if I recall correctly so it legitimately could be causing them problems. Or they don’t have enough direction and good leadership to actually execute competently
  - scoopertrooper 6y ago
    I think their problem was they just tried to be too clever about the whole thing. If Google just produced a modern looking phone with top-tier specs and a nice clean Android install with no bloatware and some extra AI smarts, they'd be having trouble keeping up with the demand. Instead, they came to market with ugly outdated designs to support wizz-bang features that nobody cared about. I feel like they almost hit the mark with the Pixel 5 line, but for some reason they lost the confidence to stick a 8XX series processor in it.
    - sangnoir 6y ago
      > If Google just produced a modern looking phone with top-tier specs and a nice clean Android install with no bloatware and some extra AI smarts, they'd be having trouble keeping up with the demand. Google had most of that (excluding AI) when they owned Motorola's phone unit. The phones had clean Android, respectable specs, inoffensively designed and very competitive on pricing. Unfortunately, Google had to unbundle Motorola, in part due to anti-trust concerns, as well as Samsung's public and private grumbling about the arrangement (Tizen, and a handful of Windows Mobile phones where promoted as a shot across Google's bow, in the same timeframe).
happycube 6y ago
Qualcomm gave up designing their own mobile cores after Snapdragon 820 (all 'Kyro' cores since then are lightly customized A7x's), and then the team got axed when they gave up on servers. That said, when intel's mobile team in Isreal took their gloves off...
- akmittal 6y ago
  Companies giving up on wrong time is just so common. AWS has big plans for ARM in cloud, In long term i see ARM entirely replacing x86. For consumer market power consumption may not be a big deal but cloud companies running millions of instances it very well would.
  - happycube 6y ago
    A lot of it is that it's hard to design a modern application CPU. Unlike the others Apple was able to put it all together and had the advantage of tuning for their own software (i.e. the NSObject optimization) Graviton2 uses an ARM-designed core and actually cut the cache sizes a bit from ARM's recommendation, and it's certainly competitive if not an absolute 'wow!' like M1 is. (Apple could have shipped at that level 2-3 years ago.)

cbozeman 6y ago

I don't think anyone will need to worry about Google. As soon as they realize its actually hard, and as soon as they hit the slightest roadblock, they'll give up, like they literally do on every fucking product that isn't a huge instant hit that everyone fawns over.

abakker 6y ago
I don't know - imagine a chromebook, but with a custom SOC with compiler optimizations designed to improve battery life on auto-play video ad popups. Seems right up their alley /s
- akmittal 6y ago
  I see Google moving from Advertisement model to Subscription based. They did same with YouTube.
akmittal 6y ago
Google is not really good at hardware, they tried high end phones but were not very successful. They realised that and moved to mid tier phones. More than performance they are focusing on creating a Google ecosystem where all their hardware and services integrate seamlessly.
- cbozeman 6y ago
  Yeah, as it turns out, making exceptional shit from the ground up is really really tough. Hence the reason Google Fiber got laughed out of existence. Google thought everyone would just bend over backwards and laud their arrival. I guess they were shocked that it would require money and actual effort, like most difficult undertakings.
  - vlovich123 6y ago
    Contradictory evidence to your point is that they regularly design all kinds of data center Hw (famous for starting the whole paradigm of building data centers with consumer HW) and build best-in-industry ML accelerators (TPUs). Don’t mistake building and selling consumer HW with building components. Very different problems. The former is as equal parts art as it is engineering. Building your own CPU will be vastly simpler. Whether or not Google has the same level of coordination between HW and SW to have Android benefit so greatly, I don’t know. It’s also unclear how big a step building the CPU is for Google. Lots of talented people on that project. That being said, it’s already behind schedule if I recall correctly so it legitimately could be causing them problems. Or they don’t have enough direction and good leadership to actually execute competently
- scoopertrooper 6y ago
  I think their problem was they just tried to be too clever about the whole thing. If Google just produced a modern looking phone with top-tier specs and a nice clean Android install with no bloatware and some extra AI smarts, they'd be having trouble keeping up with the demand. Instead, they came to market with ugly outdated designs to support wizz-bang features that nobody cared about. I feel like they almost hit the mark with the Pixel 5 line, but for some reason they lost the confidence to stick a 8XX series processor in it.
  - sangnoir 6y ago
    > If Google just produced a modern looking phone with top-tier specs and a nice clean Android install with no bloatware and some extra AI smarts, they'd be having trouble keeping up with the demand. Google had most of that (excluding AI) when they owned Motorola's phone unit. The phones had clean Android, respectable specs, inoffensively designed and very competitive on pricing. Unfortunately, Google had to unbundle Motorola, in part due to anti-trust concerns, as well as Samsung's public and private grumbling about the arrangement (Tizen, and a handful of Windows Mobile phones where promoted as a shot across Google's bow, in the same timeframe).

happycube 6y ago

Qualcomm gave up designing their own mobile cores after Snapdragon 820 (all 'Kyro' cores since then are lightly customized A7x's), and then the team got axed when they gave up on servers. That said, when intel's mobile team in Isreal took their gloves off...

akmittal 6y ago
Companies giving up on wrong time is just so common. AWS has big plans for ARM in cloud, In long term i see ARM entirely replacing x86. For consumer market power consumption may not be a big deal but cloud companies running millions of instances it very well would.
- happycube 6y ago
  A lot of it is that it's hard to design a modern application CPU. Unlike the others Apple was able to put it all together and had the advantage of tuning for their own software (i.e. the NSObject optimization) Graviton2 uses an ARM-designed core and actually cut the cache sizes a bit from ARM's recommendation, and it's certainly competitive if not an absolute 'wow!' like M1 is. (Apple could have shipped at that level 2-3 years ago.)