Google is hiring a former top executive from Intel's design engineering division to head up a new server chip division, adding to the technology industry's efforts to reduce its dependence on Intel.
The technology titan said that it is "doubling down" on internally-designed server chips in a bid to improve the energy efficiency and performance of the data centers that run its cloud services. To give a booster shot to its efforts, Google announced last week it hired Intel engineering executive Uri Frank to lead a newly established division that will design and develop custom server chips.
With the Frank's hiring as its vice president of engineering for server chip design, Google is tearing a page from the playbooks of its larger rivals in the cloud computing market. Amazon has been developing Arm-based server chips and rolling them out over its AWS cloud service for the last three years. Microsoft is reportedly also working on Arm-based CPUs for data centers.
“谷歌已经设计并建造了世界上最大，最电源的计算系统中的一些，”弗兰克说在他的新角色。“长期以来，自定义筹码一直是这一战略的重要组成部分。”弗兰克将超过20年的CPU设计经验到谷歌，表示，他期待着建立新的服务器处理器部门。
阿明Vahdat作为谷歌的副总裁系统infrastructure, said that the company is assembling "world-class" engineering team in Israel. He said in a blog post that the unit would focus on working with customers and partners to make systems-on-a-chip (SoCs) for servers, expanding on the wide range of other server chips developed by Google over the last half decade.
2015年，谷歌推出了其第一个张量加工单位（TPU），以加快其数据中心的人工智能琐事，并于2018年表示，它将允许其他公司通过其云计算服务购买芯片的访问。然后，2019年，该公司推出了其Opentitan SoC，其开源和超安全芯片，旨在作为系统的信任根。
Google also designs its own hardware for data centers ranging from network switches to network accelerator cards that consist of its in-house chips and parts it sources from Intel and other firms.
The company wants to away from buying all of these components from different vendors and wiring them together on a motherboard. Instead, it is trying to employ more systems-on-a-chip (SoCs), which integrate the CPU and other computing modules on the same die, or system-in-package (SiP) designs, which combine different chips in a single package, in the data center.
“The motherboard has been our integration point, where we compose CPUs, networking, storage devices, accelerators, memory, all from different vendors, into an optimized system,” said Vahdat. “But that’s no longer sufficient: to gain higher performance and to use less power, our workloads demand even deeper integration into the underlying hardware."
通过将更多这些功能巩固在单个硅或单个包中，他表示，谷歌可以通过“数量级”来改善不同组件之间的延迟和带宽。“他说这些类型的服务器芯片非常紧密集成，与现在使用的主板上的离散组件相比，使它们“大大降低”的力量和成本。
“SoC是新的主板，”Vahdat说。
谷歌，亚马逊，微软和其他云服务提供商（CSP）在其数据中心中连续升级服务器和其他硬件，因为全球对云服务的需求增长。它们在大量由英特尔设计的服务器芯片上燃烧了数十亿美元，该筹码大约有90％的服务器CPU市场，这花了数千美元的成千上万美元。
但他们也越来越多地转向定制芯片设计，这些设计更适合他们的需求，很有希望能够在现成的服务器处理器上以每美元的性能提升。据报道，虽然Microsoft正在进行基于ARM的服务器芯片来部署其Azure Cloud Service，Amazon去年推出新的云服务 - 或“实例” - 基于自定义ARM的Graviton CPU。
云计算巨头表示，它可以开发其SOC的核心积木和数据中心的啜饮，遵循其竞争对手的脚步。但它也没有针对从其有意义的外部供应商购买知识产权（IP）。最终，它可以从划伤或支付来自ARM或其他公司的底层蓝图的自定义服务器CPU内核。
Vahdat said Google's server chip strategy is focused on flexibility. "We buy where it makes sense, build it ourselves where we have to, and aim to build ecosystems that benefit the entire industry."
开发服务器类处理器需要很长时间，并且在新工程单位开始在Google的数据中心部署自定义服务器芯片之前，它可能是三年或更长时间。目前，谷歌正在推动最佳脚。URI Frank在英特尔的CPU，SOC和IP产品开发方面带来了24年的经验，他共同领导了客户工程集团。
"Together with our global ecosystem of partners, we look forward to continuing to innovate at the leading edge of compute infrastructure, delivering the next generation of capabilities that are not available elsewhere," Vahdat said.
