Google hires Apple's Manu Gulati as in-house SoC Architect

Google has reportedly hired Manu Gulati, a former Apple Employee and chief architect of SoCs. This indicates that Google is planning to build its own custom chips for its devices.

Gulati announced his new job on his Linkedin profile, stating that he now works as Google's Lead SoC Architect. He had been with Apple for around eight years and before that worked with AMD and Broadcom manufacturers. Gulati has over 20 years of experience in the industry.

Google does not make its own chips as it relies on chips from Texas Instruments for Nest home automation system, while Pixel phones are running on Qualcomm chips. 

The Pixel maker is also said to looking to recruit additional chip experts (“Hardware Engineer, Mobile SoC Architect,” “Mobile SoC CPU Architect,” and “Mobile SoC Memory Architect”) to have more control over future Pixel hardware. Job description phrases include "help define the architecture of future generations of phone and tablet" chips.

Currently, OEMs rely on Qualcomm and MediaTek chips for their smartphones. Apple (Ax), Samsung (Exynos) and Huawei (Kirin) also have their own chips, while Xiaomi earlier this month joined the bandwagon with its own Pincone S1 chip. 

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