There is new evidence that Google is working on its own in-house chip for its next smartphone, which could be the Pixel 6. While the tech giant has long used Qualcomm chips for its Pixel line, the Pixel 6 may run a chip, that is currently being referred to internally as “Whitechapel,” according to XDA Developers.
Referencing code changes submitted to the Android Open Source Project (AOSP), XDA noted that Google engineers were communicating with some developers and potentially mentioned the Pixel 6 and the in-house chip by assumed codenames.
The Google engineer says “You don’t need coredomain to use binder_use. This one lives fine on P21.”
XDA claims that “P21” refers to Pixel 21, which is likely the Pixel 6. “Whitechapel” is clearly later visible on the source link that is made available.
Finally, the term “GS101” in the link likely stands for Google Silicon, all solid clues of the company developing its own SoC.
Prior reports indicate that Google’s Whitechapel chip could be a 5nm octa-core ARM SoC with two Cortex-A78 CPU cores, two Cortex-A76 cores, and quad Cortex-A55 cores, and an ARM Mali GPU. It’s performance may be comparable to a Qualcomm 700-series chip.
Google CEO, Sundar Pichai also said in a third quarter 2020 earnings call that the company plans to release a Pixel 5 successor in October 2021. Additional, Pichai said Google “deeper investments in hardware,” in what is now the current year.
Since then 9to5Google uncovered the codenames for Google’s upcoming 2021 smartphones as “Raven” and “Oriole.” One of these will likely be the Pixel 6.
Overall, Google using its own chips would allow the company to have better control over driver updates, which could leave to longer longer upgrade cycles for Pixel devices in particular. Currently Pixel smartphones get three years of Android updates, but with Google SoCs they could potentially get 4 or 5 years of OS updates.
