Big G cambia le carte in tavola: il prossimo smartphone Pixel 6 avrà un chip proprietario all’avanguardia, progettato e costruito insieme a Samsung.
Google segue la strada aperta da Apple: un processore proprietario, tutto nuovo e sviluppato in casa, per equipaggiare gli smartphone Pixel e i PC portatili Chromebook. La notizia, che se fosse vera sarebbe rivoluzionaria, è stata riportata in esclusiva da 9to5Google.
La testata americana è entrata in possesso di alcuni documenti riservati, che in cui si accenna al nuovo chip, a chi lo costruirà e ai dispositivi che lo integreranno per primi. Tutto, al momento, descritto solo con i nomi in codice interni di Google. Il famigerato chip, ad esempio, è chiamato “WhiteChapel“, fa parte della piattaforma “Slider” e viene anche identificato come “GS101″. Where GS, perhaps, stands for “Google Silicon“.
Google Silicon, what is known at the moment
In the documents acquired by 9to5Google the term Whitechapel is used along with Slider, it should be a shared platform for Google’s first Whitechapel SoC. Internally Google would instead refer to this chip as GS101.
Slider also appears in other documents, in which Samsung and its Exynos SoCs are also mentioned. It would seem, then, that Whitechapel was developed by Google together with Samsung Semiconductor. So it might have some parts in common with Samsung Exynos.
The first phones equipped with this new chip should be “Raven” and “Oriole”, the two Pixel codenames that should correspond to Pixel 6 and Pixel 5a 5G.
Google Silicon, why it matters
Putting this puzzle together, then, the next generation of Google phones (to be launched in the fall) will no longer use Qualcomm’s SoCs, but will instead be built on Google’s Whitechapel hardware platform, with chips manufactured by Samsung.
The news is important because, going forward, these chips could show a significantly higher level of performance than the SoCs we know today. And this, paradoxically, not for the hardware but for the software.
If Google produces new Pixel smartphones every year, in fact, it is not so much to make profits in this difficult market but to show the world what Android can do if it is well optimized.
So much so that the latest Pixel, the Pixel 5 5G, is equipped with a Qualcomm Snapdragon 765G processor that is not at all a top of the range SoC. Yet the Pixel 5 is as fast as a top-of-the-line in everyday use, and you have to use particularly heavy apps (like games) to put it through its paces.
If Google can do so much with a processor made by someone else, then, what will it be able to do with a homemade chip? The answer, most likely, is easier than you might think: what Apple can do with its Apple Silicon.