Facebook Builds Chip Team, ASIC

Web giant rallies support for AI compiler

Rick Merritt, EETimes
9/14/2018 00:01 AM EDT

SAN JOSE, Calif. — A Facebook executive confirmed reports the social networking giant is hiring chip engineers and designing at least one ASIC. The news came at the @Scale event here where Facebook announced five chip companies will support Glow, an open-source, deep-learning compiler it backs.

Facebook “is absolutely bringing up a silicon team focused on working with silicon providers, and we have a chip we’re building, but it’s not our primary focus,” said Jason Taylor, vice president of infrastructure at Facebook. The chip is “not the equivalent of [Google’s] TPU” deep learning accelerator, he added, declining to provide further details on its focus or time frame.

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