Google rumoured to be building its own chips for the Pixels and Chromebooks

Google is said to be designing its own processors for the Pixel phones and Chromebooks. 

A source familiar with the matter told Axios that Google is designing the chip in collaboration with Samsung. The chip is codenamed Whitechapel and will be built on Samsung's 5nm technology.

Whitechapel is expected to be an 8-core ARM processor with hardware optimised for Google's machine learning technology. Whitechapel will also have a dedicated portion of the chip for improving the performance and "always-on" capabilities of Google Assistant.

Google is believed to have received the first working versions of the chip in recent weeks, but the chips will not be ready until next year. The Pixel phones will be the first Google devices to be equipped with Whitechapel and subsequent versions of the chips will be used to power the Chromebooks. 

The Pixel lineup currently uses Qualcomm Snapdragon mobile platforms, hence Google's move to develop its own processors could be a blow to Qualcomm. 

Source: Axios