Speaking of: Google's Tensor Processor

When I wrote about Apple silicon yesterday, I hadn't yet seen the details of Google's new Tensor chip, which was announced yesterday afternoon. Seeing these new processors adds a bit more nuance to where I think the industry is headed.

I previously thought we were witnessing the death of Intel. In reality, we might be witnessing the death of catch-all chips. Now that we're asking our devices to do more complex things and answer more complicated queries, we need to give those devices a more specialized brain equipped to handle those tasks. The Tensor series sounds like it's hyper-focused on machine learning. Amazon's chips will be designed specifically for cloud server needs. Apple's A series chips aim to minimize power consumption. Our computing needs may be pushing us to a point where not everything can be solved sufficiently by just throwing a Core i5 at it, and overcoming that will take a healthy ecosystem of custom SoCs fit for every use case.