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Google Tensor SoC debuts on the new Pixel 6 this fall
- Scene_Cast2 5y agoI wonder about the baseband (radio - wifi & cell) component. Are they using Qualcomm / Intel standalone chips? Or did they buy an IP core to integrate onto the SoC? I somehow doubt that they did it in-house, as it's a massive effort to match current state of the art.
- buggeryorkshire 5y agoI think it's a collaboration with Samsung so would imagine they're using the Exynos stuff
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- hn_throwaway_99 5y agoUnrelated to this article specifically, but the biggest thing I'm looking forward to with the Pixel 6 is the improved updates timeline, as Google has said they will provide updates for at least 5 years, which puts them more in-line with Apple. Previous Pixels worked great but then inexplicably lost OS updates after only a few years.
- xnx 5y agoThis is a great benefit and likely a direct result of them having more (total?) control over the hardware and related drivers.
- actuator 5y agoAmortized cost on the update cycle of Pixel was pretty similar to iPhone(at least in some parts of the world). But I am glad that they are doing longer updates. I just wish batteries become replaceable again, my phone is 3.5 years old and the only thing that is noticeably worse is battery life. If we are gunning for longer update cycles, batteries should ideally be replaceable. I sincerely hope some big country takes up this as an environmentally friendly/right to repair thing and forces all manufacturers to do this.
- nicoburns 5y agoIt's not as convenient as a user replaceable battery, but most phones have batteries that are replaceable by repair shows cheaply. Weirdly my 3.5 year old phone actually has about the same battery life as it started with. As android 3.5 years ago was terrible at battery management, so software updates have compensated for battery degradation.
- actuator 5y agoBut all those replacements seem to be with someone pulling apart the phone's components secured with glue. It looks extremely risky and likely to cause damage to phone or components like display ended up getting scratched. Also, are original spec batteries available easily? I don't want to put something which is not the same as it might cause some battery related accident.
- iav 5y agoIf you factor in the resale value of a 2 year old iPhone and a 2 year old Pixel, I doubt this is true. And one of the biggest reasons for the high depreciation is the loss of software updates...
- actuator 5y agoYeah, that's definitely true. I think more than software updates, iPhone has an aspirational value in many parts of the world so there is good demand from people who can't buy a new one. Pixel in itself doesn't hold that value and there are manufacturers who will have an Android phone with Pixel's specs in half the price of Pixel within a year of its launch.
- ChuckNorris89 5y ago>Previous Pixels worked great but then inexplicably lost OS updates after only a few years. AFAIK it's not inexplicabile, it's just Quallcomm stopping driver support for newer Android versions a few short years down the road, since they're in the business of selling as many chips as possible and can't monetize the users keeping their phone longer like Apple and Google can with their software and services.
- Teknoman117 5y agoQualcomm will only ever ship one kernel version for a given SoC and never try to upstream support. Google uses LTS Linux kernels for Android, and once upstream stops supporting a version, the phone usually stops getting support shortly after.
- zozbot234 5y agoLast I checked, the postmarketOS folks were working on submitting drivers for older devices to the mainline kernel, with some notable successes.
- Teknoman117 5y agoRight. My point was that Qualcomm is not doing this themselves. The only snapdragon support in upstream (Linux, Mesa, etc.) is done by dedicated people in the OSS community. Qualcomm (and MediaTek, etc.) fork the latest LTS kernel or android common kernel, hack it up for that SoC, and dump that on vendors as the msmXXXX kernel. They'll rebase on top of upstream or android common kernel patches (of that version) for the contracted lifespan, and then pretend that SoC didn't exist.
- matmatmatmat 5y agoThis seems like such a short-sighted move by Qualcomm, is there some reason that they would do this and risk losing Google as a customer? Or, did they always assume that they would lose Google as a customer and so they thought it wouldn't be worth the investment?
- dheera 5y ago"Tensor"? Google makes some great stuff but I really wish their product naming conventions weren't so confusing. First they have the Nexus 7, Nexus 4, Nexus 10, and then ... Nexus 5, Nexus 6, Nexus 9, ... oh wait they aren't versions, they are number of inches ... -____- and most people in this world don't even think in inches -_____- And then they have Google Hangouts, Google Hangouts Meet, google Meet, Google Chat, Google Hangouts Dialer, Google Duo, Google Uno, uh .... And then now TensorFlow and then Tensor ... is that like TensorFlow without the flow?
- ferdowsi 5y agohttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tensor_Processing_Unit https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tensor_Processing_Unit > Osterloh did explain that the SoC is an ARM chip designed around a TPU, or Tensor Processing Unit
- m3kw9 5y agoThe industrial build quality would also need to be on par with Apple iPhones to see all the updates.
- riffraff 5y agoSo who is physically building this chip?
- tux3 5y agoThe Google TPUs were made at TSMC, I wouldn't be surprised if the phone Tensor chip is fabbed there too.
- pdpi 5y agoNever mind "physically building". The whole section about the CPU is pretty evasive about who designed it to begin with. They kind of, sort of, imply it's their own design — "our first custom built SoC", "The team that designed our silicon" — but neither statement actually says that it's their own design.
- not2b 5y agoIt's their own design, codenamed "Whitechapel". Evidently they got help from Samsung. As for who will physically make it, either Samsung or TSMC, no one else can fab this 5nm design. Looks like getting Qualcomm out of the picture is one motivation.
- one_off_comment 5y agoYikes. I'm not a fan of the design because I like my phone to be able to sit flat on surfaces.
- wlesieutre 5y agoAt least this can sit flat on one axis and should stay put when you tap anywhere on the screen, unlike phones with camera bumps in the corner that rock back and forth diagonally
- fwip 5y agoAnd if I'm looking at it correctly, the lenses will be a bit further (fractions of a millimeter) from the surface when laying like that. I always worry a little bit when laying my current phone down on its back with tiny lens pop-up, how the lens is basically in contact with whatever I set it on.
- vmception 5y agomy case prevents that
- chis 5y agoIt seems like this design will make it very difficult to design cases. On most phones with camera bumps, the case ends up sitting flush with the bump and has a hole for it. Here the case would either have to go over the bump (adding thickness) or be attached only along the edge (easy to break)
- yellow_lead 5y agoAnd it kinda looks like a tennis strap?
- deeviant 5y agoI'm having difficulty thinking of use cases where you'd need your phone to sit flat other than alleviating OCD? Regardless, I'm sure someone will make a case that mostly flush.
- postalrat 5y agoThey should see if all their AI can help them produce this phone for $300 or under.
- candiddevmike 5y agoI read the entire blog post and I don't understand the fanfare, it's a custom SoC, presumably to rival Apple's M1. I don't see anything innovative about this, besides heralding "begun, the neural net wars have". What is the benefit of having all of the ML bits on device? Can models leverage them post training?
- dman 5y agoHopefully this translates into the phones being supported for longer since they are an inhouse design.
- slownews45 5y agoLatency can be better if they get it right.
- hn_throwaway_99 5y ago> What is the benefit of having all of the ML bits on device? Can models leverage them post training? Yes, the whole point is to be able do to things like improve personalized speech recognition on-device, image recognition on-device, translation on-device, etc.
- Jtsummers 5y agoReduced latency. Which has an apparent performance boost versus sending data to Google for processing and waiting for a response. Potentially improved privacy (this is how Apple tries to sell it). Less data has to leave the phone to gain the utility of the ML models. Improved device performance. Reduced network use and better specialized chips leading to better performance. Either in terms of better battery life or better time to get the result.
- jmnicolas 5y ago> Potentially improved privacy On a Google device I would say the potential is reduced to zero!
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- jadbox 5y agoWas there no demos to show off the chip?
- peq 5y ago> Pixel 6 will have the most layers of hardware security in any phone**. > **Based on a count of independent hardware security subsystems and components. That does not seem like a meaningful measure for security.
- sanguy 5y ago....and these security levels are irrelevant when the OS manufacture is the worry for data harvesting.....
- amluto 5y agoFrom experience with x86: adding more security layers does not inherently make a better design.
- xnx 5y agoDefinitely a bit of marketing language to try and make the complexities of security understandable. I think of it as similar to a door with multiple, independent, locking mechanisms.
- Lammy 5y agoIt makes sense if you think of it as security from you instead of security for you
- Havoc 5y agoThrow it in a zip lock bag for an immediate +1 security layer
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- 63 5y agoI imagine I'm in the minority but I'd rather have a phone a fraction of a millimeter thicker that has a flush back. At this point it's getting out of hand.
- ThaDood 5y agoProbably not the minority. I know I would appreciate a flush back but lets be real consumers really don't have a ton of influence on a design choice like this.
- xnx 5y agoI'm the opposite. I'm happy to have a camera bulge if that means better optics and images. I think the idea is that this phone will have the same thickness for most people who use a case.
- paxys 5y agoThe current generation of smartphones is designed with the expectation that people will use a case. Pixel 6 cases will no doubt account for the camera shape, like all the rest.
- 63 5y agoI actually hadn't considered that. I don't usually use cases because they make buttons too mushy and take away from the look and feel of the phone and I (so far) don't drop it anyway. I might look for a good thin case or something.
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- actuator 5y agoFrom the Verge article it seems the CPU in SoC would be some licensed spec based on Exynos, so I am guessing we aren't going to see CPU performance close to A series processors, but it does seem like a promising start. Google has an incentive to go all in on CPU design as that helps their data centers and GCP both, so we might see significant gains over time. I had to buy a new phone and I am really happy that Pixel 6 looks promising, otherwise iPhone would have been the only choice. I really wish Samsung would get its act together on software and updates, as they have really compelling hardware. For now, at least from the preview of Verge it looks like I will probably pick up a Pixel 6.
- aix1 5y ago> Google has an incentive to go all in on CPU design as that helps their data centers and GCP both, so we might see significant gains over time. It seems that CPU design for phones and for data centres are quite different problems, or do you see them as facets of the same problem?
- actuator 5y agoAt least my understanding was that the SoC would be different but the CPU core of phone SoC itself would be similar with the laptop/desktop/server die. The server SoC would probably feature more cores, with more memory interfaces and higher clock speed due to more thermal allowance. At least that's what Apple seems to have done between M1 and A series processors.
- qmarchi 5y agoI'd imagine that if Google were to ever start deploying ARM servers, it could be a big boon. Amazon Web Services and Oracle Cloud already have ARM servers available, and Azure is supposedly working on their own ARM chips, wouldn't be that much of a stretch. (Disc: I work for Google, but not in Cloud nor Pixel)
- the-rc 5y agoIt doesn't need to be public facing servers. It could be also for internal uses such as the storage nodes or YouTube transcoding (which has custom decoding/encoding HW as well). I doubt they'd keep the Tensor subsystem for applications like those, though... Except perhaps for YT, where one day you could feed models with frames as they get converted.
- 2bitencryption 5y ago> The improved sensors and lenses are now too big to fit into the traditional square ah yes, the age-old traditional camera square, first pioneered in the year of 2018. truly a bygone era
- dheera 5y ago"Tensor"? Google makes some great stuff but I really wish their product naming conventions weren't so confusing. First they have the Nexus 7, Nexus 4, Nexus 10, and then ... Nexus 5, Nexus 6, Nexus 9, ... oh wait they aren't versions, they are number of inches ... -____- And then they have Google Hangouts, Google Hangouts Meet, google Meet, Google Chat, Google Hangouts Dialer, Google Duo, Google Uno, uh .... And then now TensorFlow and then Tensor ... is that like TensorFlow without the flow?
- qmarchi 5y agoThere's also: - Tensor = the SoC for the Pixel 6 + P6 Pro - Tensor Processing Unit = co-processor on the Tensor SoC, and as a dedicated chip on other Google Phones, - Edge Tensor Processing Unit = a dedicated device (USB/M.2/Chip) for edge compute device (R-Pi Style) (Disc: Work for Google, not on Pixels)
- screye 5y agoI am hoping to splurge on a phone in 2021, and it's between the Pixel 6 pro and the Fold 3 for me. As phones they couldn't be more different. The Fold3 aims to completely change the way we experience phones, while compromising on standard phones essentials (camera). On the other hand, the Pixel6pro looks to be a final evolution of the classical smartphone, maximizing for battery, camera, software-smoothness and hitting all the essentials correctly.
- martythemaniak 5y agoThe rumourmill has it that there is a "Pixel Fold" coming this year, featuring Samsung screens. While I'd love a pixel foldable, Samsung has had a few generations to fine-tune their foldable screens, so I don't know how good a first-gen of those can be. https://www.tomsguide.com/news/google-pixel-fold https://www.tomsguide.com/news/google-pixel-fold
- sto_hristo 5y agoHow about a phone that is not a phone anymore, but computer in a phone form factor. Because that hardware is that capable for some time. It's so infuriating watching all this effort going into "experience" features that all boil down to shooting selfies and liking posts on facebook.
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- dont__panic 5y agoOther sources seem to be reporting 6.4" and 6.7" diagonal screens. So I guess even the smaller Pixel is now as large as the iPhone Max? Guess I shouldn't have gotten my hopes up for a surge of small phones spurred by the iPhone 12 Mini. Which is a real shame, since I'm way overdue for an upgrade but 99% of phones are way too large.
- srfwx 5y agopixel 5 has the perfect form factor imho
- evdkush 5y agoPlease, some manufacturer: - slate form factor < 6"; the phone should fit in my damn pocket - no hole punch or notch for the camera on the front (how was this even acceptable to consumers, it looks like shit) - no otherwise irregular protrusions for the back camera or whatever Is this just impossible now? Think Galaxy S9, but just with upgraded hardware and maybe smaller bottom bezels.
- unethical_ban 5y agoThere are very few things holding me to Android besides familiarity. I'm glad they exist and I think sideloading/3P app stores are important to have "in the world", but the iPhone 12 Mini is just amazing. If it had OLED/high refresh, I wouldn't question my next purchase at all.
- aitchnyu 5y agoDid they publish battery capacity?
- gerash 5y agoThere are some points mentioned in https://youtu.be/l9SHUSP_LJ8 https://youtu.be/l9SHUSP_LJ8 to tame everyone's expectations for this SOC.