
Google hires a key Apple chip designer - jrwan
https://www.engadget.com/2017/12/23/google-poaches-a-key-apple-chip-designer/
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drewg123
"Right now, its only in-house silicon is the Pixel Visual Core imaging chip
inside the Pixel 2"

This statement completely ignores the group making the TPU. Google has more
hardware expertise than just the consumer electronics folks.

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puzzle
There's a lot more. The article makes it sound like this is all recent, but
the Visual Core was in the works for at least three years. Then there's the
Titan security chip and the Lanai processor used in Google NICs. Google is
heavily involved in RISC-V, through David Patterson, who also worked on the
TPU and is, of course, famous for the Berkeley RISC that eventually turned
into Sun's Sparc. It also has expertise in other areas like memory chips or
more esoteric ones like silicon photonics. Then there is a bunch of former PA
Semi folks and even an Alpha architect, Dick Sites, although none of those
worked on CPU design at Google, AFAIK.

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dmoy
Patterson like Hennessy & Patterson?

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puzzle
Yes. Hennessy is a Google board member, too. It's a small world.

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papaver-somnamb
Can anyone layout a path to becoming as skilled in chip design as these people
like John Bruno? As though I would be able to do a competent Verilog
implementation of RISC-V or 68040 in my own workshop.

As a hobby (back when I had the luxury of time) I designed several ALUs, and
two CPUs featuring datapaths and register transfer control. I did them as
digital circuit diagrams on paper, on breadboards (which teaches the valuable
lessons of signal fanout, wire layout, debugging), and in squirrel (which
teaches the value of good tooling, one way or another). I've toyed with VHDL,
Verilog, and FPGAs, and am competent in assembly and C. I'm interested, but I
don't know what the path forward looks like to gaining the chops that these
famed designers have.

~~~
DanBC
> As a hobby (back when I had the luxury of time) I designed several ALUs, and
> two CPUs featuring datapaths and register transfer control. I did them as
> digital circuit diagrams on paper, on breadboards (which teaches the
> valuable lessons of signal fanout, wire layout, debugging), and in squirrel
> (which teaches the value of good tooling, one way or another). I've toyed
> with VHDL, Verilog, and FPGAs

Not an answer to your question, but I'd love to read some blog posts about
this please.

~~~
papaver-somnamb
That's the luxury of time thing.

If I was a recipient of universal basic income, it's the first item on my
list. A series starting from grass roots leading to code-level manifestation
and verification of landmark chips like MOS 6502, Zilog Z80 and onwards up to
MIPS R4000, SuperSPARC, Intel 80486, Motorola 68040. And a deep dive to
implementing a lisp-based OS and tooling to both run & compile itself,
completing the circle. There is so much interesting about CPUs, from large
architectural design considerations like machine type (Von-Neuman or Harvard)
and MMUs through to minutiae like choice of instructions and the encoding of
the instruction set, balancing the conflicting demands of instruction timing
optimizations versus silicon space and power budget, math intrinsics, ... this
rabbit hole runs deep. I'm starting to wonder if any one person is able to
master all of the requisite topics, similar to the pseudo-fact that there is
no one person who is able to manufacture a can of Coke from scratch. But, we
can try, and that is where the fun is :)

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bitmapbrother
Google and Microsoft both expressed concern about the potential Broadcom
takeover of Qualcomm. And since Broadcom and Apple on on good graces one can't
help but wonder Apple's influence in all of this especially when you consider
the timing. If Broadcom does take over Qualcomm then Google needs to be
prepared to pivot in the event Broadcom decides to take actions that are not
aligned with Google's interests. I'd also like to see some real innovation in
Android SoC's because there certainly hasn't been any from Qualcomm who's R&D
strategy is now taking ARM's latest reference design, making a few
modifications and calling it a day.

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CalChris
Google had earlier (well, 7 years earlier) bought AgniLux, a follow on company
with people from PA Semi which had been bought by Apple. That looked an awful
lot like an acquihire. Dunno if they went on to do TPU or what.

[https://arstechnica.com/information-
technology/2010/04/googl...](https://arstechnica.com/information-
technology/2010/04/google-buys-secret-chip-startup/)

~~~
puzzle
They worked on Chrome hardware. Google is heavily involved in the development
of the boards that end up in manufacturers' Chromebooks and Chromeboxes.

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dboreham
The cycle is complete: DEC and IBM are reborn, and the Intel business model is
in retreat.

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baybal2
AMD's tragedy, the make brilliant engineers in house and have talent at
picking good cadres, but very few of them will go to work on any greenfield
development for them.

The moment a cadre on a level of Keller or Bruno gets bored, they loose them

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mtgx
I wonder if they plan to build an ARM CPU or a RISC-V CPU.

[https://riscv.org/membership/999/google/](https://riscv.org/membership/999/google/)

~~~
sweden
No, they are working on their own SoC to launch it in the next Pixel phone or
in the one after.

They want to become like Apple and control their entire ecosystem all the way
from the hardware to the software in their premium phones. They are tired of
the current mess with all smartphone makers polluting the market with Android
phones that stop being supported after a couple of years. Their target to have
a full premium Google phone is around 2019.

Source: _wink_ _wink_

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thechut
The Apple A series processors are ARM based...

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acomjean
I think one of the confusing things is ARM holdings doesn't sell physical
chips. They sell a spec (verlog code I believe) that can be turned into a
chip. Add some usb, memory, video card, maybe wireless and you get a system on
a chip.

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ethbro
ARM sells many things, that many different customers use.

One is a license run the ARM ISA, so you can design a chip from the ground up.
Another is a license to produce a reference implementation of a single
processor design. Others peripherals and options exist too.

So, in short, a microprocessor architect might be needed to build an ARM chip,
depending on how one was going about it.

~~~
cmsj
and to be clear, what Apple has is the ISA license. Apple's ARM CPUs are not
just the reference design from ARM. I'm not enough of a hardware person to
know if they are modifying the design or have implemented the ISA from
scratch, but their chips seem to be significantly faster than anyone else's so
they're clearly doing something smart :)

~~~
monocasa
They've almost certainly designed their cores from scratch.

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thisisit
Aside from the obvious clickbait title, the article is very light on detail
and filled with speculation. The original referenced article is here
(paywall):

[https://www.theinformation.com/google-ramps-up-mobile-
chipma...](https://www.theinformation.com/google-ramps-up-mobile-chipmaking-
with-talent-from-apple)

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ghufran_syed
Doesn't the word "poaching" in the title imply that the employee was somehow
Apple's property? Wouldn't "Google hires a key Apple chip designer" be a
clearer, less sensational way to put it?

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amelius
It's what the headlines would read if this was about a sports star.

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phkahler
>> It's what the headlines would read if this was about a sports star.

This is probably the correct interpretation. "Poaching" seems to be the word
used when a person is specifically targeted because of their experience.
They're viewed as key, so it's not just good for the one hiring them, but bad
for the company losing them. If you think of hiring as dragging a net through
the water an sifting through the catch, poaching would be more like spear
fishing.

Or it could just be sensational headline writing.

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gimmeminusnow4
is Google and Apple only companies in this whole world anymore can create
mobile phones ? Why is whole world following these 2 companies ? Is this the
"internet / mobile phone" ghetto ?

Almost like google and facebook, is there anybody who could leave these
services and understand, they are created to spy you, just like your mobile
phones.

~~~
xj9
well, purism is trying, MSFT tried, Jolla tried.

mobile is a tough market to crack! its expensive and the network effects that
influence what people buy are pretty strong.

