Apple is well-known for designing its own processors that go into the iPhone, and now Google may be doing the same thing.
Google is reportedly working on its own processor in partnership with Samsung. The chip is codenamed Whitechapel, reports Axios, and it's said that this is an 8-core ARM processor that would be built using 5 nanometer technology.
This Whitechapel chip will reportedly include hardware that's optimized for Google's machine learning tech, and a part of it will also be dedicated to improving Google Assistant's performance and always-on features.
Google just received the first working versions of its Whitechapel chip in recent weeks, but it's expected that the processor wouldn't be ready to be used in Pixel phones until next year.
It's said that Google could also eventually use its own chips in Chromebooks, but that that's even farther off in the future.
Samsung already makes chips for itself and for Apple, and so it makes sense that Google would turn to Samsung to make its new chip, too. As for why Google might want to design its own processor, doing so would give Google much more control over what features the chip might have. Plus, Google could decide when the chip would begin appearing in phones.