Facebook Could Soon Design Its Own Chipsets

It might be an understatement to say that Facebook has had a tumultuous month and a half. Ever since the Cambridge Analatyica data breach controversy broke out, Facebook has been under the cosh for its lackadaisical data privacy guidelines. However, not all is gloomy for the social media giant as the company seeks to build its own chipset designing team.

According to a job listing on its corporate website, Facebook is looking to hire a manager to build an:

End-to-end SoC/ASIC, firmware and driver development organization.

The listing indicates that the process of building this team is still in its early stages. Interestingly, Facebook AI researcher Yann LeCun tweeted about some of the job postings as well.

Facebook, just like a lot of other tech giants, appears to have taken this step to, in the future, reduce the cost of production and also have greater control over the final product. As Apple has proven time and again, optimisation of software and hardware can do wonders for a product.

The social media company has joined a long list of companies moving away from outsourcing chipmaking tasks. According to a few people close to the matter, Facebook is building a team to design its own semiconductors to lower their dependence on chipmakers such as Intel Corp. and Qualcomm Inc. Apple started making its own chipsets in 2010 and now uses them across many of its major product lines like iPhones, iPads etc. Google as well, has developed its own artificial intelligence chip.

Facebook has long been rumoured to be working on a bunch of smart speakers. The company will also launch the Oculus Go, a standalone VR headset which will run on a Qualcomm chipset. Building a team to design its own chipsets could be for the future of its hardware business.