Google introduced the Tensor series of chips with the Pixel 6 series in 2021. It was meant to usher in a range of chips specially tailored by Google to keep up with its class-leading AI-based software features. Just three Tensor chips in, and many of Google’s new AI features need to be off-loaded to the cloud for processing.
I think the problem is the conflicting goals that Google has with that chip. They want the chip to be able to run AI stuff locally with the Edge TPU ASIC that it includes, but at the same time Google also wants to make money by having Pixel devices offload AI tasks to the cloud. Google can’t reconcile these two goals.
I don’t think they’re opposing goals. Google does not make more money from a task running in its cloud than on its devices, if anything that costs them more money.
There’s a solution: Charge the customer once for the hardware and then add a monthly fee to be able to use all of it. Sony and Microsoft have great success with that.
Do that and an unlock hack will swiftly follow.
that almost noone will use
Lol you wut?
Do you know how expensive conventional AI setups are? An unlocked AI chip on a phone would fast replace nVidia cards in the AI scene for low level researchers, especially those dealing with sensitive data for whom cloud access is not viable.
My laptop is $1500, and is just about viable for this kind of stuff. It took it three days non-stop to create a trading model for ~22 stocks, processing 10 years worth of data for each.
Now maybe it doesn’t mean much for the consumer, that’s true. It means a hell of a lot for small time developers though, including those developing the apps consumers use.