Meta is reportedly testing an in-house chip for coaching AI programs, part of a technique to cut back its reliance on {hardware} makers like Nvidia.
According to Reuters, Meta’s chip, which is designed to deal with AI-specific workloads, was manufactured in partnership with Taiwan-based agency TSMC. The firm is piloting a “small deployment” of the chip and plans to scale up manufacturing if the check is profitable.
Meta has deployed customized AI chips earlier than, however solely to run fashions — not practice them. As Reuters notes, a number of of the corporate’s chip design efforts have been canceled or in any other case scaled again after failing to satisfy inner expectations.
Meta expects to spend $65 billion on capital expenditure this 12 months, a lot of which can go towards Nvidia GPUs. If the corporate manages to cut back even a fraction of that value by shifting to in-house chips, it’d be a giant win for the social media big.