- Google hires Intel executive Uri Frank as vice president to run its custom chip division
- Frank will lead the custom chip division in Israel as part of Google.
- Custom chips have always been an important part of Google’s computing system.
Google Cloud has hired Intel engineering veteran Uri Frank to lead new server chip design efforts as part of the cloud service provider’s increasing investments in custom silicon. The future of cloud infrastructure is bright, and it’s changing fast. As Google continues to work to meet computing demands from around the world. And Google is happy to welcome Uri Frank as our VP of Engineering for server chip design.
The company’s current offerings include Tensor Processing Units (TPUs) to speed up ML workloads and its OpenTitan open-source silicon root-of-trust project. Over the years, it also developed custom hardware with partners, including SSDs, hard drives, network switches, and network interface cards.
Google hires an experienced chip industry executive.
Google gets an experienced chip industry executive Frank. He spent more than two decades at Intel rising from engineering roles to corporate vice president at the Design Engineering Group. His final role before leaving the company earlier this month. Frank will lead the custom chip division in Israel as part of Google. This was a big step to join a company with a long history of building custom silicon.
Google designs and has already built some of the world’s largest and most efficient computing systems. For a long time, custom chips have been an important part of this strategy. And the executive frank is looking forward to growing a team in Israel while accelerating Google Cloud’s innovations in compute infrastructure.
Custom Chip designs of different tech giants as compared to Google.
Google and other tech giants have sought more performance and power efficiency. They’ve increasingly turned towards custom chip designs tailored towards specific use cases. Google has already introduced several custom chips including its Tensor Processing Unit (to help with tasks like voice search and photo object recognition), Video Processing Units, and OpenTitan, an open-source security-focused chip.
Other tech giants have similar custom chip ambitions. Amazon has its ARM-based Graviton server chips while Facebook has announced data center chip designs of its own. Microsoft is also thought to be working on designing its server chips, as well as processors for its lineup of Surface PCs. Apple has several chip designs to its credit and is currently in the process of transitioning its Mac lineup from Intel to its ARM-based processors.
Google already designs custom chips like the Titan M and Pixel Neural Core for its phones. There have also been reports that Google is designing processors that could eventually power its Pixel phones and Chromebooks.
