[HN Gopher] Google Tensor debuts on the new Pixel 6 this fall
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Google Tensor debuts on the new Pixel 6 this fall
Author : mdwrigh2
Score : 91 points
Date : 2021-08-02 16:28 UTC (6 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (blog.google)
(TXT) w3m dump (blog.google)
| screye wrote:
| I am hoping to splurge on a phone in 2021, and it's between the
| Pixel 6 pro and the Fold 3 for me.
|
| As phones they couldn't be more different. The Fold3 aims to
| completely change the way we experience phones, while
| compromising on standard phones essentials (camera).
|
| On the other hand, the Pixel6pro looks to be a final evolution of
| the classical smartphone, maximizing for battery, camera,
| software-smoothness and hitting all the essentials correctly.
| martythemaniak wrote:
| The rumourmill has it that there is a "Pixel Fold" coming this
| year, featuring Samsung screens. While I'd love a pixel
| foldable, Samsung has had a few generations to fine-tune their
| foldable screens, so I don't know how good a first-gen of those
| can be.
|
| https://www.tomsguide.com/news/google-pixel-fold
| candiddevmike wrote:
| I read the entire blog post and I don't understand the fanfare,
| it's a custom SoC, presumably to rival Apple's M1. I don't see
| anything innovative about this, besides heralding "begun, the
| neural net wars have".
|
| What is the benefit of having all of the ML bits on device? Can
| models leverage them post training?
| nharada wrote:
| Latency, inference cost to Google. Privacy, in theory
| pdpi wrote:
| > Can models leverage them post training?
|
| Yes. The whole point is that you have a slow process train the
| model offline on very large volumes of sample data, then use
| that trained model to make actual inferences based on data you
| find in the field. As those models become bigger and more
| complex, it takes progressively more computing power to run
| inference on those models. These ML accelerators are
| effectively the new GPUs -- highly specialised processors
| designed to more efficiently handle highly specialised
| workloads.
| xnx wrote:
| To consumers they have to promote the magic/wondrous chip, but
| they greatest benefit to Google is controlling more of the
| hardware stack themselves.
| slownews45 wrote:
| Latency can be better if they get it right.
| hn_throwaway_99 wrote:
| > What is the benefit of having all of the ML bits on device?
| Can models leverage them post training?
|
| Yes, the whole point is to be able do to things like improve
| personalized speech recognition on-device, image recognition
| on-device, translation on-device, etc.
| Jtsummers wrote:
| Reduced latency. Which has an apparent performance boost versus
| sending data to Google for processing and waiting for a
| response.
|
| Potentially improved privacy (this is how Apple tries to sell
| it). Less data has to leave the phone to gain the utility of
| the ML models.
|
| Improved device performance. Reduced network use and better
| specialized chips leading to better performance. Either in
| terms of better battery life or better time to get the result.
| jmnicolas wrote:
| > Potentially improved privacy
|
| On a Google device I would say the potential is reduced to
| zero!
| npteljes wrote:
| I agree that the prospect is ludicrous. Hoping for
| potential of privacy from an ad-tech giant. Nonsense.
| bitwise-evan wrote:
| Are you asking what is the advantage of having ML optimized
| hardware on device? Yes, running inferences is expensive too,
| especially for video, photo, and speech processing. I would
| expect this phone to have user noticeable improvements in those
| three areas.
| dman wrote:
| Hopefully this translates into the phones being supported for
| longer since they are an inhouse design.
| paxys wrote:
| There is a huge benefit to being able to do common tasks like
| speech recognition and photo processing fully on device without
| a server round trip.
| [deleted]
| sto_hristo wrote:
| How about a phone that is not a phone anymore, but computer in a
| phone form factor. Because that hardware is that capable for some
| time. It's so infuriating watching all this effort going into
| "experience" features that all boil down to shooting selfies and
| liking posts on facebook.
| jadbox wrote:
| Was there no demos to show off the chip?
| peq wrote:
| > Pixel 6 will have the most layers of hardware security in any
| phone**.
|
| > **Based on a count of independent hardware security subsystems
| and components.
|
| That does not seem like a meaningful measure for security.
| xnx wrote:
| Definitely a bit of marketing language to try and make the
| complexities of security understandable. I think of it as
| similar to a door with multiple, independent, locking
| mechanisms.
| sanguy wrote:
| ....and these security levels are irrelevant when the OS
| manufacture is the worry for data harvesting.....
| Lammy wrote:
| It makes sense if you think of it as security _from_ you
| instead of security _for_ you
| amluto wrote:
| From experience with x86: adding more security layers does not
| inherently make a better design.
| Scene_Cast2 wrote:
| I wonder about the baseband (radio - wifi & cell) component. Are
| they using Qualcomm / Intel standalone chips? Or did they buy an
| IP core to integrate onto the SoC? I somehow doubt that they did
| it in-house, as it's a massive effort to match current state of
| the art.
| buggeryorkshire wrote:
| I think it's a collaboration with Samsung so would imagine
| they're using the Exynos stuff
| [deleted]
| riffraff wrote:
| So who is physically building this chip?
| tux3 wrote:
| The Google TPUs were made at TSMC, I wouldn't be surprised if
| the phone Tensor chip is fabbed there too.
| pdpi wrote:
| Never mind "physically building". The whole section about the
| CPU is pretty evasive about who _designed_ it to begin with.
| They kind of, sort of, imply it 's their own design -- "our
| first custom built SoC", "The team that designed our silicon"
| -- but neither statement actually says that it's their own
| design.
| not2b wrote:
| It's their own design, codenamed "Whitechapel". Evidently
| they got help from Samsung. As for who will physically make
| it, either Samsung or TSMC, no one else can fab this 5nm
| design.
|
| Looks like getting Qualcomm out of the picture is one
| motivation.
| 2bitencryption wrote:
| > The improved sensors and lenses are now too big to fit into the
| traditional square
|
| ah yes, the age-old traditional camera square, first pioneered in
| the year of 2018. truly a bygone era
| one_off_comment wrote:
| Yikes. I'm not a fan of the design because I like my phone to be
| able to sit flat on surfaces.
| chis wrote:
| It seems like this design will make it very difficult to design
| cases. On most phones with camera bumps, the case ends up
| sitting flush with the bump and has a hole for it. Here the
| case would either have to go over the bump (adding thickness)
| or be attached only along the edge (easy to break)
| yellow_lead wrote:
| And it kinda looks like a tennis strap?
| deeviant wrote:
| I'm having difficulty thinking of use cases where you'd need
| your phone to sit flat other than alleviating OCD?
|
| Regardless, I'm sure someone will make a case that mostly
| flush.
| wlesieutre wrote:
| At least this can sit flat on one axis and should stay put when
| you tap anywhere on the screen, unlike phones with camera bumps
| in the corner that rock back and forth diagonally
| fwip wrote:
| And if I'm looking at it correctly, the lenses will be a bit
| further (fractions of a millimeter) from the surface when
| laying like that. I always worry a little bit when laying my
| current phone down on its back with tiny lens pop-up, how the
| lens is basically in contact with whatever I set it on.
| vmception wrote:
| my case prevents that
| hn_throwaway_99 wrote:
| Unrelated to this article specifically, but the biggest thing I'm
| looking forward to with the Pixel 6 is the improved updates
| timeline, as Google has said they will provide updates for at
| least 5 years, which puts them more in-line with Apple.
|
| Previous Pixels worked great but then inexplicably lost OS
| updates after only a few years.
| xnx wrote:
| This is a great benefit and likely a direct result of them
| having more (total?) control over the hardware and related
| drivers.
| actuator wrote:
| Amortized cost on the update cycle of Pixel was pretty similar
| to iPhone(at least in some parts of the world). But I am glad
| that they are doing longer updates.
|
| I just wish batteries become replaceable again, my phone is 3.5
| years old and the only thing that is noticeably worse is
| battery life. If we are gunning for longer update cycles,
| batteries should ideally be replaceable. I sincerely hope some
| big country takes up this as an environmentally friendly/right
| to repair thing and forces all manufacturers to do this.
| nicoburns wrote:
| It's not as convenient as a user replaceable battery, but
| most phones have batteries that are replaceable by repair
| shows cheaply.
|
| Weirdly my 3.5 year old phone actually has about the same
| battery life as it started with. As android 3.5 years ago was
| terrible at battery management, so software updates have
| compensated for battery degradation.
| actuator wrote:
| But all those replacements seem to be with someone pulling
| apart the phone's components secured with glue. It looks
| extremely risky and likely to cause damage to phone or
| components like display ended up getting scratched.
|
| Also, are original spec batteries available easily? I don't
| want to put something which is not the same as it might
| cause some battery related accident.
| t0bia_s wrote:
| OLED dispalys are very sensitive for pressure. But
| isolropyl alcohol helps a lot with detatching anythig
| glued.
| nicoburns wrote:
| I think the repair shops tend to have specialised tools
| for dealing with this. Things like suction cups to pull
| the screens off with.
| iav wrote:
| If you factor in the resale value of a 2 year old iPhone and
| a 2 year old Pixel, I doubt this is true. And one of the
| biggest reasons for the high depreciation is the loss of
| software updates...
| actuator wrote:
| Yeah, that's definitely true.
|
| I think more than software updates, iPhone has an
| aspirational value in many parts of the world so there is
| good demand from people who can't buy a new one. Pixel in
| itself doesn't hold that value and there are manufacturers
| who will have an Android phone with Pixel's specs in half
| the price of Pixel within a year of its launch.
| t0bia_s wrote:
| I replaced battery in my smartphone from 2018 last week.
| Works perfect. It is not that difficult. Look on few guides
| on YouTube and you'll be fine. Be carefull with battery
| detatch. Usually it is glued by tape, but isopropyl alcohol
| helps a lot.
| fasicle wrote:
| Agreed - I'm still on a Pixel 2 and the phone is running
| great except the battery life. I have to charge it twice a
| day now.
| ChuckNorris89 wrote:
| _> Previous Pixels worked great but then inexplicably lost OS
| updates after only a few years._
|
| AFAIK it's not inexplicabile, it's just Quallcomm stopping
| driver support for newer Android versions a few short years
| down the road, since they're in the business of selling as many
| chips as possible and can't monetize the users keeping their
| phone longer like Apple and Google can with their software and
| services.
| Teknoman117 wrote:
| Qualcomm will only ever ship one kernel version for a given
| SoC and never try to upstream support.
|
| Google uses LTS Linux kernels for Android, and once upstream
| stops supporting a version, the phone usually stops getting
| support shortly after.
| zozbot234 wrote:
| Last I checked, the postmarketOS folks were working on
| submitting drivers for older devices to the mainline
| kernel, with some notable successes.
| Teknoman117 wrote:
| Right. My point was that Qualcomm is not doing this
| themselves. The only snapdragon support in upstream
| (Linux, Mesa, etc.) is done by dedicated people in the
| OSS community.
|
| Qualcomm (and MediaTek, etc.) fork the latest LTS kernel
| or android common kernel, hack it up for that SoC, and
| dump that on vendors as the msmXXXX kernel.
|
| They'll rebase on top of upstream or android common
| kernel patches (of that version) for the contracted
| lifespan, and then pretend that SoC didn't exist.
| matmatmatmat wrote:
| This seems like such a short-sighted move by Qualcomm, is
| there some reason that they would do this and risk losing
| Google as a customer? Or, did they always assume that
| they would lose Google as a customer and so they thought
| it wouldn't be worth the investment?
| zozbot234 wrote:
| The downstream kernels are full of terrible and
| disgusting hacks. They're just doing the bare minimum to
| get some semblance of Linux running on the hardware, then
| forgetting about it almost entirely aside from whatever
| random security hotfixes they're going to release, and
| refocusing entirely on their next design. There's no real
| effort being put into coding for long-term
| maintainability, that's left to the hobbyist community.
| m3kw9 wrote:
| The industrial build quality would also need to be on par with
| Apple iPhones to see all the updates.
| dheera wrote:
| "Tensor"? Google makes some great stuff but I really wish their
| product naming conventions weren't so confusing.
|
| First they have the Nexus 7, Nexus 4, Nexus 10, and then ...
| Nexus 5, Nexus 6, Nexus 9, ... oh wait they aren't versions,
| they are number of inches ... -____- and most people in this
| world don't even think in inches -_____-
|
| And then they have Google Hangouts, Google Hangouts Meet,
| google Meet, Google Chat, Google Hangouts Dialer, Google Duo,
| Google Uno, uh ....
|
| And then now TensorFlow and then Tensor ... is that like
| TensorFlow without the flow?
| ferdowsi wrote:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tensor_Processing_Unit
|
| > Osterloh did explain that the SoC is an ARM chip designed
| around a TPU, or Tensor Processing Unit
| postalrat wrote:
| They should see if all their AI can help them produce this phone
| for $300 or under.
| 63 wrote:
| I imagine I'm in the minority but I'd rather have a phone a
| fraction of a millimeter thicker that has a flush back. At this
| point it's getting out of hand.
| crazygringo wrote:
| Why?
|
| What's the useful advantage to a flush back? I don't really see
| any. As long as I can hold the phone, and it can lie on a table
| or stand without wobbling, it seems to do what it needs to.
|
| It's not like you're stacking phones on top of each other the
| way you do books or magazines. (And heck if you work in repair
| or provisioning and actually do stack phones, it's easy enough
| to turn every other one 180deg.)
|
| Also I don't know where you're getting "fraction of a
| millimeter" from. Camera bumps are significantly _more_ than a
| whole millimeter. And their function is depth, not volume --
| you can 't redistribute it across the whole case or anything.
| You'd have to make the entire phone thicker, and then heavier
| as well if you're putting anything into the new extra space.
| brundolf wrote:
| You can set it flat on a table or desk without a weird
| rocking effect
| nicoburns wrote:
| Less annoying in your pocket
| [deleted]
| mdoms wrote:
| It feels and looks better. That's it.
| 63 wrote:
| I just think it's nicer honestly. There's no rational thought
| behind it, it just feels cleaner. I don't really mind extra
| weight or thickness, it's not like I'm struggling to pick up
| my phone. I actually have exceptionally large hands so if
| anything a bigger phone might be better, though I'm not
| terribly concerned about it.
| ThaDood wrote:
| Probably not the minority. I know I would appreciate a flush
| back but lets be real consumers really don't have a ton of
| influence on a design choice like this.
| xnx wrote:
| I'm the opposite. I'm happy to have a camera bulge if that
| means better optics and images. I think the idea is that this
| phone will have the same thickness for most people who use a
| case.
| 63 wrote:
| That's a fair point. I should start using a case.
| handrous wrote:
| The design makes sense if your assumption is that approximately
| everyone's going to put a case on it, whether or not the back
| is flat.
| paxys wrote:
| The current generation of smartphones is designed with the
| expectation that people will use a case. Pixel 6 cases will no
| doubt account for the camera shape, like all the rest.
| 63 wrote:
| I actually hadn't considered that. I don't usually use cases
| because they make buttons too mushy and take away from the
| look and feel of the phone and I (so far) don't drop it
| anyway. I might look for a good thin case or something.
| dgudkov wrote:
| If that extra millimeter went to extra battery capacity, it
| would give an extra day of life to the phone. I would
| appreciate it more than just a flush back.
| lvs wrote:
| The sharp edge looks like it will catch on a pocket. The Nexus
| 6 also had a flawed camera bump, causing the phone to spin
| freely on flat surfaces.
| vmception wrote:
| Going to snag a bunch of tampons out of purses too.
| handrous wrote:
| I had an early Nexus phone (I forget exactly which one) that
| had a seemingly physics-defying ability to slooooowly (over
| the course of minutes) slide off apparently-flat-but-
| actually-slightly-not surfaces, when laid on its back. Not
| due to alert vibrations, either, but when entirely idle, or
| even turned off. I think Google accidentally made the back
| out of some kind of sci-fi ultraslick material or something.
| blacksmith_tb wrote:
| Can't phone cases 'mind the gap' though? I suppose they might
| still leave a little notch across the top of the camera bulge,
| but I would think that wouldn't bother people too much.
| dheera wrote:
| "Tensor"? Google makes some great stuff but I really wish their
| product naming conventions weren't so confusing.
|
| First they have the Nexus 7, Nexus 4, Nexus 10, and then ...
| Nexus 5, Nexus 6, Nexus 9, ... oh wait they aren't versions, they
| are number of inches ... -____-
|
| And then they have Google Hangouts, Google Hangouts Meet, google
| Meet, Google Chat, Google Hangouts Dialer, Google Duo, Google
| Uno, uh ....
|
| And then now TensorFlow and then Tensor ... is that like
| TensorFlow without the flow?
| qmarchi wrote:
| There's also: - Tensor = the SoC for the Pixel 6 + P6 Pro -
| Tensor Processing Unit = co-processor on the Tensor SoC, and as
| a dedicated chip on other Google Phones, - Edge Tensor
| Processing Unit = a dedicated device (USB/M.2/Chip) for edge
| compute device (R-Pi Style)
|
| (Disc: Work for Google, not on Pixels)
| actuator wrote:
| From the Verge article it seems the CPU in SoC would be some
| licensed spec based on Exynos, so I am guessing we aren't going
| to see CPU performance close to A series processors, but it does
| seem like a promising start. Google has an incentive to go all in
| on CPU design as that helps their data centers and GCP both, so
| we might see significant gains over time.
|
| I had to buy a new phone and I am really happy that Pixel 6 looks
| promising, otherwise iPhone would have been the only choice. I
| really wish Samsung would get its act together on software and
| updates, as they have really compelling hardware. For now, at
| least from the preview of Verge it looks like I will probably
| pick up a Pixel 6.
| aix1 wrote:
| > Google has an incentive to go all in on CPU design as that
| helps their data centers and GCP both, so we might see
| significant gains over time.
|
| It seems that CPU design for phones and for data centres are
| quite different problems, or do you see them as facets of the
| same problem?
| qmarchi wrote:
| I'd imagine that if Google were to ever start deploying ARM
| servers, it could be a big boon. Amazon Web Services and
| Oracle Cloud already have ARM servers available, and Azure is
| supposedly working on their own ARM chips, wouldn't be that
| much of a stretch.
|
| (Disc: I work for Google, but not in Cloud nor Pixel)
| the-rc wrote:
| It doesn't need to be public facing servers. It could be
| also for internal uses such as the storage nodes or YouTube
| transcoding (which has custom decoding/encoding HW as
| well). I doubt they'd keep the Tensor subsystem for
| applications like those, though... Except perhaps for YT,
| where one day you could feed models with frames as they get
| converted.
| wmf wrote:
| The Nuvia Phoenix core is designed for servers but Qualcomm
| is putting it in phones. That didn't work well for Mongoose
| but we'll see.
| ksec wrote:
| >It seems that CPU design for phones and for data centres are
| quite different problems
|
| Still limited by the same TDP. Just as data point and
| prospective Apple spend more TDP budget on its mobile CPU
| core than any current ARM Server CPU core.
| actuator wrote:
| At least my understanding was that the SoC would be different
| but the CPU core of phone SoC itself would be similar with
| the laptop/desktop/server die. The server SoC would probably
| feature more cores, with more memory interfaces and higher
| clock speed due to more thermal allowance.
|
| At least that's what Apple seems to have done between M1 and
| A series processors.
| ksec wrote:
| >SoC would be some licensed spec based on Exynos
|
| I am most interested in their choice of GPU. Would it be AMD?
| dont__panic wrote:
| Other sources seem to be reporting 6.4" and 6.7" diagonal
| screens. So I guess even the smaller Pixel is now as large as the
| iPhone Max?
|
| Guess I shouldn't have gotten my hopes up for a surge of small
| phones spurred by the iPhone 12 Mini. Which is a real shame,
| since I'm way overdue for an upgrade but 99% of phones are way
| too large.
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