Google Is Finally Making Its Own Smartphone Chips, Coming In 2021

Dhir Acharya - Apr 16, 2020

After buying HTC's intellectual property and resources, Google has moved on to the next big step: Designing its own chips.

In 2017, Google bought HTC’s intellectual property and resource for $1.1 billion. And not, it looks like the tech giant is taking the next big step, making its own computer chip.

The information was first reported by Axios, which says that the tech giant recently got the first functional prototypes of its custom-designed chip called Whitechapel. Accordingly, the chip was created under a partnership between Google and Samsung, using Samsung’s 5nm fabrication process.

Google is making its own chip using Samsung's 5nm process

The chip appears to be an 8nm ARM-based platform that will power smartphones, and eventually mobile devices such as the Chromebook. Apart from computing and processing tasks, as usual, Whitechapel will provide better support for AI as well as machine-learning functions such as Google Assistant and other always-on Google services such as the song identification feature on Pixel phones. According to the Axios report, the chip won’t come to retail devices until at least next year.

Google declined to comment on the matter.

Even when the tech giant doesn’t say anything officially, it makes sense that the tech giant wants to make custom processors for its devices. Major phone makers in the world are already making their own chips, like the A-series of Apple, the Exynos chips of Samsung, and the Kirin processors of Huawei.

The tech giant has received the first prototype if its Whitechapel processor

With custom chips, phone makers have better control over the computing power and features of their mobile devices. Since Google has been relying on machine learning and AI to power its devices, this plan makes even more sense.

The tech giant has tried making smaller, single-purpose chips, such as the Titan M or the Pixel Visual Core, used in the Pixel 4 to improve photo processing.

This is important because making a chip of its own will help Google catch up to its rival the iPhone maker that has enjoyed the advantage over the past few years over Android rivals relying on Mediatek and Qualcomm. Anyway, we will have to wait until 2021 to see how things turn out.