It seems that one of the spearheads where all the large companies related to the world of technology want to be is precisely in the development of new artificial intelligence systems and platforms. Due to this and, after reaping great results, the next logical step is to create your own hardware, a more than interesting evolution of all programs in order to have the optimal hardware for your own platforms.
On this occasion, perhaps this logical step that we are talking about can draw even more attention since, as you can read in the headline of this post, we are not talking about companies like Google, Apple and even Huawei, but about Facebook. Still, it was to be expected, especially when we consider the great benefits that having their own hardware architecture has brought to the aforementioned companies completely customized to work with artificial intelligence systems exclusively.
Facebook would be immersed in the development of its own chip for artificial intelligence, as has been revealed from Bloomberg
Before continuing, tell you that all this information has been revealed by none other than Mark Gurman in Bloomberg so, as is to be understood, at least for the moment there is no official information from Facebook about the fact that certainly its engineers are working on this very special chip in which, as you are surely thinking, they have to invest many millions of dollars in its development, testing and production.
Based on the statements of Mark Gurman, apparently the clues to this project emerge through some new jobs that Facebook seeks to fill with qualified personnel. These positions seek to recruit semiconductor specialists as well as a manager with sufficient capacity to build a platform 'End-to-end Soc / ASIC', a firmware and drivers for development and operation. In addition to this, Facebook itself announces that all these posts will go to an area that is still in its early stages of formation.
Thanks to this department, Facebook will be able to reduce its dependence on external companies such as Intel or Qualcomm
In addition to the benefits that having your own hardware for specific tasks can have, there are many rumors that suggest that Facebook would be thinking of becoming self-sufficient in this field in order to reduce as much as possible the dependence they have today on external manufacturers such as Intel or Qualcomm. At the same time, it is also being rumored that the famous search engine company is looking for highly qualified personnel in the artificial intelligence and machine learning sectors.
Unfortunately and for the moment the truth is that there is no official information on why Facebook is working on the development and use of these new SoCs and ASICs, although, as expected, the investment should be used to promote future developments to be carried out in North American companies. Returning to rumors, the fact that Facebook is interested in developing a smart speaker, new cameras and even virtual reality helmets is being discussed, with increasing force, fields in which this type of communication is much more interesting. custom hardware as your engineers could focus on working for a single platform.
Be that as it may, as all market analysts expect, this information is expected to become official either during the Facebook developer conference or, conversely, at the Oculus conference. Conferences where, in addition to revealing the purpose of this department, the first details of this new project are offered. Without a doubt, it seems that the future of Facebook begins to diversify towards many other markets, something that could be achieved if this new hardware development department exclusively for the platform begins to take shape and give its first results in the short term.