Pixel 2 Has Google’s First In-House Chipset: Pixel Visual Core

[Megalith]

The Pixel 2 and Pixel 2 XL had a secret Image Processing Unit (IPU) that none of us knew about until now: Google has just announced that both phones contain their first custom-designed System on Chip (SoC), called Pixel Visual Core. In the coming weeks and months, Google will enable the Pixel Visual Core to help bring the Pixel camera’s HDR+ magic to third party camera apps.

The goal here is to bring the Pixel 2’s HDR+ smarts to others outside of the Google Camera app. The SoC will do so by taking advantage of its eight Google-designed custom cores that can deliver “over 3 trillion operations per second on a mobile power budget.” By using the Pixel Visual Core, Google says that HDR+ can run 5x faster and at less than 1/10th the energy than if it was trying to through the application processor (like the Snapdragon 835 in these phones).

 

[jwcalla]

Somebody should create a custom core that gives better battery life and a removable SD card.

 

[FrgMstr]

The centerpiece of Pixel Visual Core is the Google-designed Image Processing Unit (IPU)—a fully programmable, domain-specific processor designed from scratch to deliver maximum performance at low power. With eight Google-designed custom cores, each with 512 arithmetic logic units (ALUs), the IPU delivers raw performance of over 3 trillion operations per second on a mobile power budget. Using Pixel Visual Core, HDR+ can run 5x faster and at less than 1/10th the energy than running on the application processor (AP). A key ingredient to the IPU’s efficiency is the tight coupling of hardware and software—our software controls many more details of the hardware than in a typical processor. Handing more control to the software makes the hardware simpler and more efficient, but it also makes the IPU challenging to program using traditional programming languages. To avoid this, the IPU leverages domain-specific languages that ease the burden on both developers and the compiler: Halide for image processing and TensorFlow for machine learning. A custom Google-made compiler optimizes the code for the underlying hardware.

 

[Deleted member 278999]

Somebody should create a custom core that gives better battery life and a removable SD card.

Lol,

Not likely to happen. Need them thin phones for your skinny jeans. And at that - who on their right mind would want expandable storage?

 

[vegeta535]

Somebody should create a custom core that gives better battery life which is also removable and a removable SD card.

Fixed.

 

[ChadD]

Does make me wonder what else Google is baking in their labs. Wonder how far way we are from Google licencing chip designs, or like Apple building their own mobile ARM SOCs for the pixels. Hopefully being not Apple they would build a SOC for their Pixel line and licence/sell their SOC to third party android manufacturers as well. Imagine a Android-Blackberry powered by a Google CPU... the though of such a thing just 5 years ago would have had me rolling on the floor.

 

[sfsuphysics]

So is the image on the right supposed to be "better"? All I see is an image that has been overly brightened, and the background lacks contrast and looks like ass. Sometimes shadows are a nice thing.

 

[Azphira]