It’s no secret that Google has been working on developing server chips for years, and according to reports from The Information, the company has now taken a big step in that direction. Google has reportedly made enough progress to make such hardware the basis of its services from 2025.
The solution would be an evolution of the Tensor Processor Units (TPU) that the company has been developing since 2015. Google uses them primarily in artificial intelligence, while the company continues to rely on CPUs and GPUs from other manufacturers in other areas.
Another initiative important to Google’s goals is the Tensor G2 chip, developed from ARM Cortex cores and the Mali 6710 GPU. Using a number of custom components, the product would be manufactured by Samsung using its 5-nanometre process, which is central to the search engine giant’s future plans.
Google wants to take the market away from Amazon
The decision to build its own chip line is linked to Google’s desire to steal the market from Amazon in the server world. Amazon has been using the AWS Graviton processor since 2018 and currently offers several optimisations that help make the company’s business more attractive to customers.
To compete with this, Google is reportedly relying on two 5-nanometre ARM processors. One is known as Cypress and is being developed in the company’s Israeli division, while the other, Maple, is being tested at TSMC and was developed by Uri Frank, who spent 25 years in Intel’s CPU business.
The information states that Cypress is considered Plan A, while Maple would be an alternative solution, Plan B. The company intends to start mass production of the chips in 2024 and use them in its hardware structure by 2025. None of this would be good news for partners like AMD and Intel given Google’s size in this segment.