Google reportedly plans to put its chips in Chromebook laptops from 2023

September 2, 2021: -Google is developing its central processors for its notebook and tablet computers, the latest sign that significant tech players see in-house chip development as key to their competitiveness.

The U.S. internet giant is planning to roll out the CPUs for laptops and tablets running on the company’s Chrome operating system in around 2023, three sources with knowledge of the matter said to Nikkei Asia.

Google also ramps up its efforts to build mobile processors for its Pixel smartphones, and other devices post announcing that it is going to use in-house processor chips in its upcoming Pixel 6 series, they said.

Google’s increasing focus on developing its chips comes as global rivals pursue a strategy to differentiate their offerings. Amazon, Facebook, Microsoft, Tesla, Baidu, and Alibaba Group Holding are racing to build their semiconductors to power their cloud services and electronic products.

The new CPUs and the mobile processors that Google develops are based on the chip blueprints of Arm, the Softbank-controlled U.K. chip company whose intellectual property is being used in over 90% of the world’s mobile devices.

Google told some of the suppliers in the latest meetings that it sees potential for huge growth opportunities in the global market as it is the only U.S. smartphone maker building handsets that use the Android operating system.

Regarding chip development, experts say that the strategy of Google is a logical move but also becomes a challenge.

“We found that all the tech titans are joining the foray to build their custom chips as in that way they could program their features into those chips that meet its specific needs,” Eric Tseng, chief analyst with Isaiah.

Peter Hanbury, a partner at consulting firm Bain & Co., told Nikkei Asia that the cost of designing a cutting-edge 5-nm chip is around $500 million, in comparison to about $50 million to develop a chip using more mature production technologies, like 28-nm tech. “Very few players have the skills or financial resources to design their chips, so the typical players considering this path tend to be huge players, like the cloud service providers, or have precious applications for these specially designed chips.”

Google started to build its silicon dubbed tensor processing units to facilitate its workloads for artificial intelligence computing for its data center cloud servers in 2016. It unveiled the fourth generation of TPUs this May. It is hiring chip engineers worldwide, including in Israel, India, and Taiwan — all key tech economies and at home in the U.S., according to supply chain executives, employees, and its job postings. Google has already hired chip talent from its critical suppliers, including Intel, Qualcomm, and Mediatek, according to Nikkei Asia analysis of LinkedIn profiles and other sources.

Google declined to comment except for confirming its earlier announcement that it will use the Tensor mobile processors for its future Pixel 6 handsets.