Comment on Exclusive: Meta to lay off employees in metaverse silicon unit on Wednesday

Chunk@lemmy.world ⁨8⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

• gurmif@sopuli.xyz ⁨8⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  Is it really surprising that a massive company investing billions into a nascent technology would develop in-house chips for it?

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  • Chunk@lemmy.world ⁨8⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    Yes

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    • gurmif@sopuli.xyz ⁨8⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      Ok… Why is it surprising?

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      • Chunk@lemmy.world ⁨8⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

        Because building a chip design branch is a very large undertaking.

        • Chips are expensive to design
        • Expensive to manufacture
        • you need to buy millions and millions of them
        • the lifecycle of a chipset has a much longer tail than their metaverse attempt

        It’s surprising because they invested all that money on a product they don’t know is going to take off (metaverse) and the chips won’t be ready for a very long time.

        What kind of chip are they even building? There are massive corporations that have spent a very long time building performance, low power cores (Apple, Qualcomm, Samsung) but instead of buying from them they want to reinvent the wheel.

        It’s surprising because Facebook thinks they can catch up to the other chip design companies which takes an enormous amount of investment over decades. It’s not a 1, 2, or 5 year thing.

        So, now I’m curious. Can you please explain why you think this is a very normal and unsurprising thing for Facebook to try and do?

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