I searched HN; nobody had submitted this story from any source to the best of my knowledge. First I heard about this Project Whitechapel was today when Dave2d mentioned it in a video about upcoming next gen (2021) smartphones, props to Dave: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U7HxYOaFr88 – couldn't believe it hadn't been discussed here.
Well, Exynos SoCs are widely panned as garbage. People in Europe regularly import HK versions of phones to get the Qualcomm version.
Second, my understanding is they don't have CDMA support, which is still relevant in the US. So they either use Snapdragons, or pay Qualcomm for the patents and then go make a new SoC. I guess it's easier to just pay Qualcomm for the Snapdragons.
1. Samsung Silicon uses Samsung Foundry, there is a yield / quality / capacity / performance issue.
2. Qualcomm patents on CDMA and having much better modem.
3. Qualcomm's GPU being better than ARM Mali and CPU being better than Stock ARM ( Samsung ) implementation.
But All of these are changing and Samsung wants to succeed in these areas. Foundry is catching up a little bit, so may be a little more than 1 year behind in TSMC in terms of league edge and capacity. ( Forget about their goals and Roadmap as well as investors notes they are even worst than Intel ). They have signed a partnership agreement with AMD bringing RDNA to Mobile. Their Modem is improving with each generation, and the patents issues has been sorted out recently. ( Which is pretty much the same deal as Apple )
It will take some time. 2021 Exynos may be a little too early so 2022 seems like a safe bet. Although Qualcomm isn't sitting still either.
While it looks like copying Apple, it doesn't necessarily mean this is a bad idea. Google did produce TPUs so this isn't theirs first rodeo. Also Apple is using ARM so whatever are their improvements, others can potentially match. Of course the execution matters, but if the current trend continues it may well be an existential threat to Android and by extension, Google.
Also, presumably this whole process didn't start this month. Developing a chip takes time. This article makes it sound as though this is well on its way to production.
It’s not just about copying Apple or reducing costs. It’s about the benefit of SoC integration, and Chrome/Android is unique enough in this regard to get a lot of benefit versus discrete components.
I have to wonder what would be the outcome, given what happened to their previous hardware efforts. I just shared this in a private chat, and the first reply was "will they also stop working after 18 months?"
Frankly I'd be happy if they stopped using those garbage POLED panels from LG. Three years and every single one of them has a green tint to the bottom half of the screen.
I'd be shocked if this ever made it to production.
I'd be more shocked if they did this for 2 generations of pixels.
The problem with vertical integration is how fast you can be obsolete by competitors. You only need 1 competitor to make a better product and your internal Engineers are going to be begging for it.
Unlike Apple customers, the rest of the population is sensitive to performance and cost. If Google can't compete people move on.
Edit- Samsung is not a flagship company, their high pricing has nothing to do with performance. At best they are mid tier.
> Unlike Apple customers, the rest of the population is sensitive to performance and cost. If Google can't compete people move on.
This is an odd phrasing: Apple's pricing isn't higher than the competition — flagship Android phones frequently cost noticeably more — and when it comes to performance it's very hard to beat the $400 iPhone SE2 at any price.
Vertical integration is what allows Apple to be ahead on both price and performance. The only way Google is matching that is with a strong long-term commitment to make similar investments. Apple will falter at some point but after years of ignoring the basics Google won't be able to take advantage of that — especially since at this point they're chasing Apple's previous generation so it'd take an extended sag for Google to catch up much less surpass with their current half-hearted strategy.
Apple has a first class in house design team. Google is subbing out so they don't get any long term benefit from an experienced employee base and they have to share a slice of the extra profit with someone else in addition to paying larger license fees to ARM than Apple needs to.
This is probably just a bow shot to Qualcomm to get a better deal out of them the same way PC vendors threaten to switch to AMD to squeeze Intel.
I don’t get how you can look at Apple’s mobile offerings, which have been years ahead of all the Android competition, and come to the conclusion that Apple customers don’t care about performance.
I’d say Apple’s customers are far more sensitive to performance than Google’s given what Android users have been willing to put up with (e.g. flagship SoCs that are years behind what’s in last year’s iPhones). If you factor in broader aspects of performance (e.g. Face ID, fingerprint unlock speed) it’s clear that the _only_ thing most Android users care about is cost. I’m not saying this to diss them, I just think the Android manufacturers owe it to their users to actually produce competitive hardware and software.
P.S. if you factor in longevity, Apple products are usually cheaper, too.
Apple has a 10 year lead time on Google for running OSes on in-house Silicon. If there is no intention to compete with Qualcomm, how are they going to get the economies of scale problem down to where the chips are affordable + performant? The volumes of Chromebooks/Pixels sold in a week vs. iPhones in a week is stark.
> Samsung is not a flagship company, their high pricing has nothing to do with performance. At best they are mid tier.
Their high pricing has to do with the slew of software and hardware features they include, many of which are executed at least reasonably well and later trickle down to mid-tier brands like Google's Pixel line or more conservative high-end brands like Apple. For instance: DeX, more flexible fast USB C and wireless charging than most manufacturers, pen/remote support with in-device charging and corresponding apps, Samsung Pay with magnetic stripe emulation, etc.
Samsung isn't focused on raw computing power, because they largely depend on the same chips as most of their manufacturers, but if you've used a newer Galaxy S/Note device the level of hardware polish and random "gimmicky" but occasionally useful features far outpaces a Pixel or similar.
Disclaimer: I currently own a Pixel (because there are other things that Google competes on) but last owned a Note 9.
Maybe a logical progression for the TPU chips and having on-board cores to manage the TPU side of things for performance does make sense and if they can scale this for other products, then why not. Given the whole mobile CPU performance caught up and power usage become the biggest saving area on the table PR financially as well as direct financial savings. Then I'd hazard a educated stab that maybe what is afoot here.
However it pans, the Linux kernel is sure going to see some nice ARM optimisations over the comming years out of all this drive.
The smart move for Google here would be to debut their own chips in Pixels, but then sell the chips to other phone manufacturers to use in their phones. Assuming the chips provide enough raw performance and interesting hardware acceleration, that would make it a reasonable business for Google to stay involved in.
[+] [-] tyingq|5 years ago|reply
Another story from April with a few more details: https://www.xda-developers.com/google-is-working-on-its-own-...
[+] [-] igravious|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] antpls|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ogre_codes|5 years ago|reply
Samsung doesn't even ship their own phones to the US with Samsung silicon. Is this a patent issue with the modems?
[+] [-] xxpor|5 years ago|reply
Second, my understanding is they don't have CDMA support, which is still relevant in the US. So they either use Snapdragons, or pay Qualcomm for the patents and then go make a new SoC. I guess it's easier to just pay Qualcomm for the Snapdragons.
[+] [-] wmf|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ksec|5 years ago|reply
2. Qualcomm patents on CDMA and having much better modem.
3. Qualcomm's GPU being better than ARM Mali and CPU being better than Stock ARM ( Samsung ) implementation.
But All of these are changing and Samsung wants to succeed in these areas. Foundry is catching up a little bit, so may be a little more than 1 year behind in TSMC in terms of league edge and capacity. ( Forget about their goals and Roadmap as well as investors notes they are even worst than Intel ). They have signed a partnership agreement with AMD bringing RDNA to Mobile. Their Modem is improving with each generation, and the patents issues has been sorted out recently. ( Which is pretty much the same deal as Apple )
It will take some time. 2021 Exynos may be a little too early so 2022 seems like a safe bet. Although Qualcomm isn't sitting still either.
[+] [-] tener|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] saagarjha|5 years ago|reply
Apple uses the ARM ISA but entirely custom cores, so this is like saying "AMD is using x86_64, so Intel can match them".
[+] [-] mankyd|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jl2718|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] the-dude|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] rcarmo|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] saagarjha|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] aitchnyu|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] syntaxing|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] borramakot|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Causality1|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] 650REDHAIR|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] free2OSS|5 years ago|reply
I'd be more shocked if they did this for 2 generations of pixels.
The problem with vertical integration is how fast you can be obsolete by competitors. You only need 1 competitor to make a better product and your internal Engineers are going to be begging for it.
Unlike Apple customers, the rest of the population is sensitive to performance and cost. If Google can't compete people move on.
Edit- Samsung is not a flagship company, their high pricing has nothing to do with performance. At best they are mid tier.
[+] [-] acdha|5 years ago|reply
This is an odd phrasing: Apple's pricing isn't higher than the competition — flagship Android phones frequently cost noticeably more — and when it comes to performance it's very hard to beat the $400 iPhone SE2 at any price.
Vertical integration is what allows Apple to be ahead on both price and performance. The only way Google is matching that is with a strong long-term commitment to make similar investments. Apple will falter at some point but after years of ignoring the basics Google won't be able to take advantage of that — especially since at this point they're chasing Apple's previous generation so it'd take an extended sag for Google to catch up much less surpass with their current half-hearted strategy.
[+] [-] kevin_thibedeau|5 years ago|reply
This is probably just a bow shot to Qualcomm to get a better deal out of them the same way PC vendors threaten to switch to AMD to squeeze Intel.
[+] [-] nxc18|5 years ago|reply
I’d say Apple’s customers are far more sensitive to performance than Google’s given what Android users have been willing to put up with (e.g. flagship SoCs that are years behind what’s in last year’s iPhones). If you factor in broader aspects of performance (e.g. Face ID, fingerprint unlock speed) it’s clear that the _only_ thing most Android users care about is cost. I’m not saying this to diss them, I just think the Android manufacturers owe it to their users to actually produce competitive hardware and software.
P.S. if you factor in longevity, Apple products are usually cheaper, too.
[+] [-] schoolornot|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] vinay427|5 years ago|reply
Their high pricing has to do with the slew of software and hardware features they include, many of which are executed at least reasonably well and later trickle down to mid-tier brands like Google's Pixel line or more conservative high-end brands like Apple. For instance: DeX, more flexible fast USB C and wireless charging than most manufacturers, pen/remote support with in-device charging and corresponding apps, Samsung Pay with magnetic stripe emulation, etc.
Samsung isn't focused on raw computing power, because they largely depend on the same chips as most of their manufacturers, but if you've used a newer Galaxy S/Note device the level of hardware polish and random "gimmicky" but occasionally useful features far outpaces a Pixel or similar.
Disclaimer: I currently own a Pixel (because there are other things that Google competes on) but last owned a Note 9.
[+] [-] rovr138|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Zenst|5 years ago|reply
However it pans, the Linux kernel is sure going to see some nice ARM optimisations over the comming years out of all this drive.
[+] [-] cmsj|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] oyra|5 years ago|reply
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[+] [-] HenryKissinger|5 years ago|reply
Google: Write that down! Write that down!
[+] [-] kevincox|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] qz2|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|5 years ago|reply
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