Facebook has been working on its own chips and if a new report is to be believed, the company has poached one of the top chip developers at Google to help achieve its objective. Facebook reportedly started in-house chip development earlier this year when a new team was created to work on chips that would be used for servers and consumer devices.
Bloomberg reports that Facebook has hired ex-Googler Shahriar Rabii to help its chip development efforts. Rabii’s updated LinkedIn bio reveals that he’s going to be serving at Facebook as a vice president and head of silicon.
The report earlier this year mentioned that Facebook is in the earlys tages of developing its own chips for servers and consumer devices. The assumption is that the company wants the chip team to develop solutions that can be used for its artificial intelligence servers. The products that the new team creates may eventually be used for other products such as smart speakers or virtual reality headsets from Facebook-owned Oculus.
A custom chip might help Facebook down the line as it would enable the company to reduce its reliance on suppliers such as Qualcomm. For example, Oculus has launched its Oculus Go VR headset which runs on a Qualcomm chip. Facebook’s custom chip could help power VR headsets in the future. Facebook’s Echo Show competitors may also offer enhanced AI capabilities thanks to the custom chip.
What’s not known at this point in time, though, is that when we can expect the company to reveal more details about its chip plans.
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