The doubt about the integrity of Intel's chips could be pushing Google to making its own

Dec 13, 2013 17:16 GMT  ·  By

Google is reportedly considering building its own server processors with the help of technology from ARM Holdings, which could put a dent in Intel’s business. But what’s the reason behind Google’s decision?

The company wants to be able to better manage the interactions between hardware and software and what better way to do that than get involved in the matter yourself? Furthermore, the fact that there’s a huge suspicion over Intel’s chips following reports that they could have NSA built-in backdoors surely doesn’t help matters for the manufacturer.

Bloomberg, who cites an inside source without giving out any names, says that Google has yet to make any clear decisions on the issue and that plans could change.

“We are actively engaged in designing the world’s best infrastructure. This includes both hardware design (at all levels) and software design,” a Google spokesperson said, although further details were held out on whether the company would actually build its own chips.

Google has already been quite involved in designing its data centers around the world, poking around in a number of areas. If the company decides to quit on Intel, the manufacturer’s revenue could drop dramatically. Currently, Google is Intel’s fifth largest customer, accounting for about 4.3 percent of all revenue.

If the company does decide to stop using Intel’s chips, there may be more than one reason behind the decision. It wasn’t too long ago that reports indicated that experts believed the NSA had built backdoors into Intel and AMD processors, making it easy for the intelligence agency to get through the encryption set at a hardware level.

While Intel has denied everything, it doesn’t mean that suspicion has been lifted. Just a couple of days ago, news came that FreeBSD developers said that they could not trust Intel and Via Technologies’ chip-based encryptions as they believed that they weren’t safe anymore.

Furthermore, recently, it has been revealed that the National Security Agency has gained access to the link tying together Google’s data centers, thus getting access to unencrypted data traveling through the company’s infrastructure.

Putting two and two together, it could be that Google is also looking to make sure that if Intel’s chips do have a built-in backdoor, it has replaced everything with what it knows to be safe.