Google ditched Snapdragon in 2021 to build phones around its own AI silicon.
It seems like it was just yesterday when Google dropped Qualcomm's Snapdragon chips and launched the Pixel 6 on its proprietary Tensor platform – but it's not. We've just passed the five(!) year anniversary in October, so what better time than now to look at why Google did it. The decision saw Google swap out the mobile gaming pedigree of Snapdragon in the Pixel 5a for better AI capabilities (like transcribing a rambling voice note) in the Pixel 6 with Tensor silicon shaped around Google's machine learning models.
Tensor spent its first four generations as a heavily reworked Samsung Exynos design. Google only recently moved to a chip of its own base design with last year's Tensor G5, fabricated in Taiwan by TSMC. The Tensor G6 in the new Google Pixel 11 continues that lineage, while the Pixel Watch 5 that launched beside it still carries a Qualcomm chip.
In August 2021, Google's SVP of Devices and Services, Rick Osterloh, wrote in an announcement that the company had "run into computing limitations that prevented us from fully pursuing our mission" in AI, so it built its own chip.
