Google Confirms Upcoming Pixel Devices will use Custom Silicon

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Yesterday was a huge day for Google and the company’s newly formed hardware division. The team has been working for months to develop their first Android smartphone and so far it has been met with mixed feelings. Some people are excited to see Google finally taking initiative with an Android smartphone while others are not impressed and wished the device would be priced more competitively.

We saw multiple hardware products unveiled yesterday and it seems like the company is putting more effort into expanding the talent of the new hardware division. We just saw reports of Google scooping up a former Amazon employee to run the Pixel phone brand and today we’re learning about the company’s future plans for the Pixel phone and all of the components that go inside of it. A newly published Bloomberg article was able to sit down and talk with Google’s own David Burke about the new Pixel phones and the future for the hardware division.

We’ve seen Google put out job listings for a position that would indicate they wanted to create custom chips, and we have even seen this backed up by additional reports as well. We received confirmation that Google is indeed building custom silicon, but we aren’t told the extent to which Google will customize their own chips (whether it will be custom a CPU, GPU or both). At least we get an idea as to what Google is working on.

Burke even tells us that because of the shift away from the Nexus program, they are able to work on an optimize components of the device months ahead of time. The example he gave was about a photo he saw last month that was taken from a Google handset that won’t even be unveiled until the fall of next year. This project roadmap gives Google the ability to truly focus on every aspect of their devices, and it will result in a better overall product than we saw with the Nexus program.