Google Teams Up With Rockchip For Project Ara Processing Engines

The idea of a modular smartphone is still an intriguing one. Imagine being able to swap out components in your smartphone to upgrade it rather than buying a completely new phone. If you don't know by now, Google has been working on Project Ara and, despite some hurdles such as the company selling off its Motorola division, the project is still in motion. In fact, Google recently announced that it has teamed up with Rockchip to provide the processor.

While Google has decided to go with NVIDIA’s Tegra K1 for Project Tango, it has opted to go with the Chinese-based business which will be creating a mobile SoC that will have a native, general-purpose UniPro interface for Project Ara. This will make it so that the SoC can function as an application processor in the Ara module without a bridge chip.

“We view this Rockchip processor,” says Google head of Project Ara Paul Eremenko, “as a trailblazer for our vision of a modular architecture where the processor is a node on a network with a single, universal interface--free from also serving as the network hub for all of the mobile device’s peripherals.”

Google is expecting to have a prototype out in early 2015.