Google Ramps Up Chip Design

Rick Merritt, EETimes
2/12/2014 02:08 PM EST

SAN FRANCISCO — Google appears to be ramping up a broad and deep effort in developing its own chips. Just what it is designing is still unclear.

At a panel at the International Solid-State Circuits Conference (ISSCC), veteran venture capitalist John Doerr said, "at some point in time Facebook will work on proprietary silicon, I know for a fact Google is."

The same day, another veteran chip designer at ISSCC told EE Times he knows at least two or three circuit designers Google has hired over the last year or so.

A key engineer behind the Hewlett-Packard Moonshoot server moved to Google six months ago. Partha Ranganathan "is currently at Google designing their next-generation systems," according to his website. He worked at HP on systems that can accommodate a wide range of Xeon, Atom, and ARM processors.

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