Google Pixel 2 Smartphone Features Stand-Alone HDR+ Processor

Ars Technica reports that Google Pixel 2 smartphone features a separate Google-designed image processor chip, "Pixel Visual Core." It's said "to handle the most challenging imaging and machine learning applications" and that the company is "already preparing the next set of applications" designed for the hardware. The Pixel Visual Core has its own CPU, a low power ARM A53 core, DDR4 RAM, the eight IPU cores, and a PCIe and MIPI interfaces. Google says the company's HDR+ image processing can run "5x faster and at less than 1/10th the energy" than it currently does on the main CPU. The new core will be enabled in the forthcoming Android Oreo 8.1 (MR1) update.

The new IPU cores are intended to use Halide language for image processing and TensorFlow for machine learning. A custom Google-made compiler optimizes the code for the underlying hardware.

Google also publishes an article explaining its HDR+ and portrait mode that the new core is supposed to accelerate. Google also publishes a video explaining the Pixel 2 camera features: