The ambition of making your own hardware should be appreciated as it is a costly move to undertake, and Google aims to take development into overdrive. According to the latest report, the tech giant will be aiming to reduce its dependency on traditional chip manufacturers, and offer a more integrated experience to customers thanks to the development of in-house silicon. This new report details how Google is hiring aggressively in India to aid with the development process, with the new recruits assigned to the ‘gChips’ team.
Google Hiring Aggressively From Well-Established Tech Companies Such as Qualcomm, Intel, and Even NVIDIA
Reuters has reported that Google’s ‘gChips’ team has hired at least 20 employees in the country over the past several months, including people from Qualcomm, NVIDIA, Intel, and Broadcom. 16 engineering talents have also been added, with four talent recruiters having also joined Google to help the company increase headcount to 80 people by the end of 2019 to push in-house chip development to the next stage.
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The report claims that Bengalaru, a city of India, is the design hub for the chip manufacturing industry, with the Indian recruits responsible for testing the designs before handing them off to manufacturers. Google has not just hired from the aforementioned companies, but Apple as well, back in 2017, for the Pixel lineup of smartphones. In case you didn’t know, both the Pixel 2 and Pixel 3 range feature the custom Pixel Visual Core, which was made possible thanks to the involvement of Intel.
The company’s efforts have been concentrated on chipsets that help optimize and allow for on-device machine learning. This is one reason why the company is able to pack in so many features and give them massive amounts of flexing capability while relying on a single lens solution. Using algorithms for HDR+ and features like Night Sight have made the Pixel 3 one of the best devices to use for low-light shots.
The company is also investing in chips for the cloud and enterprise with tensor processing units, but it is strange that Google is yet to work on silicon that will rival Apple’s A-series. There have been rumors in the past suggesting of Google’s efforts in working on custom hardware for future smartphones, but a previous Pixel 4 leak suggests the company will stick to Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 855 for now.
Do you think Google will be able to raise the bar if it starts to make custom silicon for its Pixel lineup? Share your thoughts down in the comments.
Source: Reuters
