A memo seen by Reuters shows that Meta plans to produce AI chips this September
The move will likely help Meta gain more independence from chip suppliers such as Nvidia
Katie Paul, Tech Correspondent
"In the world of AI, those who control their infrastructure and their compute costs really control their destiny. Meta has been at this a while. They want to have more control over their supply chain. Doing a chip helps them to get that cost of running compute down. If they buy a lot of chips from Nvidia and AMD, those are extremely expensive. It means that other companies are in the driver's seat, both in terms of cost and some control over the supply. And having some kind of chip that can help maximize efficiency of running compute, or running processes, helps them, puts them in the driver's seat more and it helps them control their costs. They're also trying to build out these brand-new business models to effectively compete with OpenAI and Anthropic. So, selling the AI models to developers to use, and that means rolling out an API, which they just did this morning. This is brand new for them. They're moving this direction for the first time after kind of embracing the open source ethos for a number of years. And so that means that they need to, try to compete on price with those other, players in the market and also keep their costs low enough that they can, you know, make this business model make sense. And so having a chip that can help them to run these processes in a way that is as cost-efficient as possible is a huge potential benefit for them."
The tech firm's data center chip, code-named "Iris," is part of a four-generation project for Meta Training and Inference Accelerators (MTIA) that it will design in-house. The plan is to use custom-built silicon to improve the AI that powers its Facebook and Instagram social media platforms.
Testing the chip took only six weeks and found no major issues, the memo showed. That relatively quick progress signals positive momentum for an in-house effort that has floundered since its launch more than half a decade ago.
Meta tailored the chip for its own needs and is working with Broadcom to help design it and Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co to manufacture it. The approach is likely to help the firm lower its massive computing costs and gain more independence from chip suppliers such as Nvidia and Advanced Micro Devices.
Posted by: Alma Angeles/NET25 News
