This year’s Pixel 6 and Pixel 6 Pro smartphones are the first to ship with Google’s Tensor GS101 processor (which is the same chip that the company is expected to use in the upcoming Pixel 6a). But according to YouTuber Marques Brownlee makes the claim that Google had planned to use the chip in last year’s Pixel 5 and only scrapped plans due to the global supply chain problems affecting the tech industry.
While I suspect Google has certainly been planning to develop custom chips with an emphasis on hardware-accelerated AI capabilities for years, there’s plenty of evidence that the Pixel 5 was never going to ship with anything but the Qualcomm Snapdragon 765 processor… although the point is kind of moot now that the Pixel 6 is here and the Pixel 5 has been discontinued (although the Pixel 5a is still available for purchase).
Here’s a roundup of recent tech news from around the web.
Why we’re skeptical that Google planned to release a Pixel 5 with Tensor [9to5Google]
There’s a rumor that Google wanted to ship the Pixel 5 with a Tensor chip instead of Snapdragon 765, but switched plans at the last minute due to supply chain issues. That seems… unlikely, since Google was testing the a Pixel 5 with SD765 in mid-2019.
Microsoft makes free Windows 11 Enterprise virtual machine available for download [ZDNet]
Microsoft has released Windows 11 Enterprise virtual machine images for VMWare, Hyper-V, VirtualBox and Parallels. Aimed at developers, the 20GB download includes Windows 11 Enterprise, the Win10 SDK, Visual Studio 2019, WSL with Ubuntu, and more.
Let’s talk about WSATools [Simone Franco]
Developer Simone Franco explains why WSATools (a free app for sideloading Android apps on Windows Subsystem for Android) was temporarily removed from the MS Store – because the way it was submitted and the use of WSA in the name.
The world’s first RISC-V phone might be just around the corner [TuxPhones]
Sipeed began showing of demo of a device with a XuanTie C910 RISC-V processor and a touchscreen display running Android 10 recently, with the promise that a RISC-V phone could be coming as soon as 2022.
RISC-V 64bit chip (C910) run Android 10~
RV64 phone will coming next year~ pic.twitter.com/qc7ubSd2DW— Sipeed (@SipeedIO) November 8, 2021
Mini-ITX Seaberry adds 11 PCIe slots to a Raspberry Pi [Jeff Geerling]
This carrier board for the Raspberry Pi Compute Module 4 adds 11 PCIe slots to the tiny computer including an x16 slot, 4 mini PCIe slots, 4 M.2 E-Key slots, 1 M.2 M-key slot (for NVMe storage), and 1 x1 slot.
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