Facebook announced that it has hired Google’s head of chip development Shahriar Rabii to be the vice president and its head of silicon. With this announcement, the company once again hinted that it is serious about building its own semiconductors, joining Apple Inc.
Shahriar Rabii previously helped Google in the development of chips for the company’s devices, including the Pixel smartphone’s custom Visual Core chip, according to his LinkedIn profile. According to the people familiar with the matter, Rabii will be working under Andrew Bosworth, the company’s head of virtual reality and augmented reality.
To remind you, Facebook is said to be forming a team to design chips. It is working on semiconductors, which can be useful for a variety of different efforts including to process information for its vast data centers and its artificial intelligence work. this move from both Google and Facebook will reduce their dependence on Qualcomm and Intel. Apple already made the move and has been shipping its own custom main processors in iPads and iPhones since 2010.
Facebook earlier this year launched the Oculus Go standalone virtual reality headset with a Qualcomm smartphone chip. It is already said to be working on a series of smart speakers with large touch screens that can also be used for video chats. Having custom chips would help with the second generation products, and would also improve its efforts in artificial intelligence. Either way, it would be interesting to see where Facebook is headed with the new move.