Google's secretive hardware team just lost three key members

After years of development, Apple has improved the performance of the A-series chips used in the iPhone to a level that is difficult for competitors to catch up. As an iOS competitor, Google, which is responsible for the development of the Android mobile operating system, lags far behind in the development of smartphone hardware. It is reported that Apple is no longer satisfied with its own SoC, so it has touched upon the design and customization of more underlying hardware, such as the 5G baseband that is being prepared.

Of course, seeing Apple becoming stronger and stronger in the field of mobile hardware, Google is not indifferent. As early as 2017, there were reports that the search giant poached a senior chip designer from Apple.

Subsequently, Google continued to recruit a large number of chip experts from well-known companies in the industry such as Qualcomm and Intel. Reuters recently reported that Google has hired 16 highly respected chip experts, and the total number of team members is expected to reach 80 by 2020.

Google has long been expected to use its own custom-designed chips in its high-end Pixel devices, but a recent report said that Google's chip team has just lost some key members (some of whom used to work at Apple).

Foreign media reported that Manu Gulati, John Bruno and Vinod Chamarty have recently resigned from Google's consumer chip project team. The search giant's ambition for hardware development may be frustrated to a certain extent.

It is reported that Gulati and Bruno worked at Apple, while Chamarty is a senior person from Qualcomm. Google confirmed this matter but declined to comment further.

Gualti has participated in the architectural design of many iPhone/iPad SoCs, especially the A5X, A7, A9, A11, A12, and A12X chips, covering the entire process from concept to production, debugging, and deployment.

Of course, Google will not easily give up the design of proprietary chips. After all, the company has achieved certain success in at least some less complex chip components (such as the Visual Core that powers the Pixel camera).

It should be pointed out that the report mentioned that Google does not intend to give up developing its own chips, but may focus more on low-end and simpler products in the future, rather than high-end components for Pixel smartphones and other devices.