Google reportedly optimistic about Pixel 6 sales, increases production by 50%

Nikkei Asia sniffed out Google’s supply chain and walked away with a pair of funny Google rumors. The first is that Google is so optimistic about sales of the Pixel 6 that it is increasing the production capacity of the device by 50%. The second is that the Pixel 6’s “Google Tensor” SoC is heading towards Chromebooks around 2023.

First, Pixel 6 optimism: Nikkei reports that Google “has high hopes for the Pixel 6 line and has asked vendors to prepare 50% more production capacity for handsets than pre-pandemic level in 2019 “. According to research firm IDC, Google shipped 7 million phones in 2019, so Google expects 10.5 million in sales. For instinctive control, Apple ships over 200 million iPhones per year, and Samsung ships between 260 million and 300 million phones.

Google has plenty of reason to be optimistic about the Pixel 6. The device marks the company’s return to the flagship smartphone market after pulling out in 2020 with the mid-range Pixel 5. It will be the first phone to ship with the boosted “Google Tensor SoC”, Google’s first main smartphone SoC. With its own SoC, there’s nothing stopping Google from dramatically increasing the lifespan of Pixel phones above the three-year mark, which we really hope the company will do. Google’s image-stacking camera algorithms have long made the company a leader in the smartphone camera quality war, but it has also rested on its hardware laurels, choosing to essentially embed the same camera sensor in the Pixel 2, 3, 3a, 4, 4a, 5 and 5a. The Pixel 6 will mark the first big camera upgrade in years, and expectations are high for what Google can do with modern camera hardware. The phone will also be the first to ship with Android 12, which places a beautiful, color-changing user interface on the front and center. It will look great in all commercials.

Google has confirmed that the Pixel 6 comes with a “Google Tensor” SoC, but other than the name, the company has not detailed the make-up of the chip or provided any technical details. Judging by the rumor, the chip appears to be nothing more than a renowned Samsung Exynos with a few extra bits of Google AI. Google only fanned the flames of this theory by announcing Tensor, saying, “The highlight of Tensor is that it can process Google’s most powerful AI and ML models right on. [the Pixel 6]. ” It is the climax ? Just AI and not many more areas of SoC development like the processor?

Google appears to be “creating” SoCs for smartphones the same way it made Nexus phones: slightly tweaking the work of other companies. My favorite rumor is that the Google Tensor has an Exynos model number – Exynos-9855 – from Samsung LSI. This would place the chip between the current Galaxy S21 Exynos 2100 (model number 9840) and next year’s Exynos 2200 (supposedly, model number 9925).

So with the idea that Google’s SoCs are modified and rebranded as Exynos chips, it wouldn’t be a big deal to stick an Exynos chip in a Chromebook. Samsung has been doing this for years. Shipping Tensor chips to Chromebooks was actually part of the original Axios rumor that started this whole Google “Whitechapel” thing. “Google has made significant progress in developing its own processor to power future versions of its Pixel smartphone as early as next year,” the 2020 report said, adding, “and possibly Chromebooks as well.”

Nikkei now says the Tensor chips for Chrome OS laptops and tablets are happening “around 2023,” which would be several iterations in Google’s custom SoC journey. Nikkei also claims that envy of Apple is a major driver of Google’s SoC efforts:

Google was particularly inspired by Apple’s success in developing its own key semiconductor components for iPhones, as well as last year’s announcement that it would replace Intel processors with its own offerings for iPhones. Mac computers and laptops, two people familiar with Google’s thinking told Nikkei Asia.

Google has to start somewhere with custom SoCs, but the company doesn’t seem close to Apple just yet. The main difference between the two companies is that Apple has an in-house processor design team with totally custom silicon that is light years away from the ARM competition. Apple achieved this by buying an entire chip design company, PA Semi, in 2008. Apple is also a $ 2 trillion computer hardware company and has invested heavily in silicon design because it is all about silicon design. ‘an essential part of the business. Google is an advertising company with a hardware division as a small side hobby and has not made an Apple-style investment in silicon. Various divisions of Google have developed internal hardware, but unless we see a vice president of Google Silicon and an independent chip design team from the division, any chip expertise is most likely spread across the divisions of Google. Google, with little cross-communication.

Most Apple Inspired Company in terms of investment, and not just branding, is Qualcomm, which recently bought chip design company Nuvia for $ 1.4 billion. Nuvia has yet to ship a product, but the CEO was previously Apple’s chief processor architect for nearly a decade, and as the new senior vice president of Qualcomm Engineering, he hopes to remake the a company like Apple. While Samsung, Huawei, and MediaTek all offer standard ARM processors and therefore are mostly equal, Qualcomm has a chance to top the fray with better processor designs than ARM’s. Samsung is trying to differentiate Exynos SoCs by making a GPU deal with AMD, but like with Google, that seems to be more an understanding of what it can accomplish than what is important, which above all is a powerful processor.

We’ll know more about Google’s chip ambitions when the Pixel 6 is announced this year.