Google Hires Apple Chip Architect

While this does not come to us from a usual tech source, Variety does seem to have all its ducks in a row after making a few calls about this this story. Google as hired Manu Gulati away from Apple. Gulati was at Apple for almost 8 years and was very active when it comes to building custom technology for the iPad, iPhone, and Apple TV. As you can see below Gulati's Linked In profile now proclaims him to be Google's "Lead SOC Architect," which is a pretty damn big deal, since Google does not currently use its own chips. This would all highly suggest that Google is now focusing on building its own chips for its Pixel phones and other products rather than relying on the likes of Qualcomm. Given that Qualcomm builds chips for the majority of Android phones, this of course begs the question of whether or not Google is looking to take over some of Qualcomm's turf.

Another big point here is how Google is very much touting the intersection of AI, hardware/software, and experiences with it on their phones and feel that the control of this intersection needs to be in their own hands.

Maybe there is hope for a future Pixel with more than 2 OS upgrades after all.

Maybe they should buy Imagination Tech and whoever has MIPS now and control their hardware completely.

I am sort of surprised Google wasn't already doing this... we know they have already had teams building AI silicon for awhile now. Makes me wonder what sorts of interesting SOC they could come up with. Perhaps the first mobile/chromeos powering chip with a AI unit ? lol

I'm sure qualcomms and the other SOC chip companies aren't to fond of this idea... Unlike Apple Google really could get their own designs in almost everything.

SoC doesn't necessarily mean phone/tablet SoC. Could be anything (or everything), from Home to TV to Auto to Chromecast or Chromebook.

Google hires one chip architect... wake me up when they hire a few dozen.

Question for those that have far better understanding of chip architecture than I do....

Isn't it REALLY hard to produce a completely new chip design from the ground up without infringing on dozens of patents? I have to think there are only so many ways to make the same mouse trap after a certain point to where "going on your own" becomes increasingly difficult.

gxp500 said:

Google hires one chip architect... wake me up when they hire a few dozen.

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He has been far from the only one, just the only one with such a high profile. Check their jobs pages and see what all is being looked for still.

I guess he wanted to actually architect a CPU for once...

John P. Myers said:

I guess he wanted to actually architect a CPU for once...

Click to expand...

Could be he was nervous Qualcomm might go under and he would have to architect a cpu?

Question: Why would you do this, unless you didn't need a cell phone chip.........why design your own architecture.......my guess is they wouldn't go through the trouble for a cell phone, but for some kind of A.I. application, like what Apple wants to do with SIri (put the power in the phone)...which I suppose could find itself in a cell phone as well.