Meta has built custom computer AI chips to help with its artificial intelligence and video-processing tasks and is expressing about chips openly in the public for the first time.
The social networking company revealed its internal silicon chip projects for the first time to reporters recently.
Although it is costly for a Meta to design and build its own computer chips, vice president of infrastructure Alexis Bjorlin expressed, “Meta believes that the improved performance will justify the investment. The company has also been overhauling its data center designs to focus more on energy-efficient techniques, such as liquid cooling, to reduce excess heat.”
Bjorlin added, “The new AI inference chip helps power some of Meta’s recommendation algorithms used to show content and ads in people’s news feeds. Meta has a multi-generational roadmap for its family of AI chips that includes processors used for the task of training AI models.”
Bjorlin said that since Meta is not in the business of cloud computing services, therefore company didn’t feel compelled to publicly express its internal data center chip projects.
Bjorlin expressed, “If you look at what we’re sharing — our first two chips that we developed — it’s definitely giving a little bit of a view into what are we doing internally. We haven’t had to advertise this, and we don’t need to advertise this, but you know; the world is interested.”
Meta vice president of Engineering Aparna Ramani said, “Meta continues to act on its belief that it should contribute to open-source technologies and AI research in order to push the field of technology. Meta is still thinking through all of our open-source collaborations, and certainly, I want to reiterate that our philosophy is still open science and cross-collaboration.”
