Meta is developing its own AI chip – hopefully it’ll be better than the Metaverse

Meta has announced the development of a new chip specifically designed to run AI models. The company is best known for its family of apps including Facebook, WhatsApp, and Instagram — and of course, for its efforts to get the metaverse off the ground — but has only recently started investing heavily in AI.

Meta’s VP and Head of Infrastructure Santosh Janardhan shares details of progress made in A recent blog posts, The company has expressed a significant increase in interest in AI, with CEO Mark Zuckerberg stating that the company “sees an opportunity to introduce AI agents to billions of people that will be useful and meaningful”.

The chip and other infrastructure plans revealed in the post will be key tools for Meta to compete with other tech giants like Google and Microsoft, which have already invested heavily in AI in the form of Google Bard and Bing’s ChatGPT interface. .

META’s new MTIA chip (META Training and Invention Accelerator) is an “in-house, custom accelerator for the ChUP family targeting inference workloads”. The chip will deliver greater computing power and efficiency optimized for Meta’s workloads. So, MTIA chips paired with GPUs will allow Meta to “deliver improved performance, lower latency, and greater efficiency for each workload.”

Why does this matter? Well, the MTIA chips could be a big boost for the Meta given the growing demand for AI computation power. As it has been built ‘in-house’, it will be designed to perfectly match Meta’s workload and demands and free the company from dependence on other companies. Still far away according to MTIA chip techcrunchreporting that we won’t see the chip until at least 2025.

too little too late?

We’ve already seen the kind of grind a company has to go through even when it’s a little late in the AI ​​game (looking at you, Google), so not seeing the chip for at least a couple years has me feeling meta. There is doubt about the place. In an increasingly AI-populated digital landscape.

That being said, there’s no doubt that we’ll see AI sneak into the meta in some way or another. Considering products like WhatsApp and Instagram under Meta’s belt, it will be interesting to see how it can apply AI to these social media apps. It could take a page out of Snapchat’s book and introduce only AI-powered chatbots, completely redoing the apps and bringing an entirely new experience to users.

I’m relieved to see the company is going in any direction that isn’t the metaverse, so while I’m a little impatient to see what it can do with artificial intelligence, I’m glad it’s focusing on something that is working who really want to use. The company’s confidence in designing its own products is commendable, and it could really help it stand out against many other AI initiatives.