Meta Platforms Inc. is deploying a new chip designed to ensure the functioning of the artificial intelligence services of this technology giant.
Currently, the mentioned firm aims to reduce the level of dependence on third-party manufacturers and developers of microcircuits. In this case, first of all, Nvidia Corp. is meant, which is now the leader in the sphere of chip production.
The microcircuit, announced by Meta on Wednesday, April 10, is the latest version of the AI accelerator for training and logical inference. In this case, it means the latest modification of MTIA, which can solve tasks such as ranking and recommending content on social media platforms that are part of the ownership structure of the technology giant. The accelerator is used on Instagram, WhatsApp, and Facebook. Last year, the debut of the first MTIA modification took place. The new chip has the internal name Artemis.
Meta is currently making a kind of transition to artificial intelligence services. As part of this process, the technology giant’s need for computing power is significantly increasing. In 2023, the company presented its first artificial intelligence model. This digital product will allow the technology giant to compete with ChatGPT from OpenAI. Moreover, Meta has added new features to its social media apps. In this case, the company has implemented chatbots with celebrities’ faces and customized stickers.
In October last year, Meta announced its intention to invest up to $35 billion in the infrastructure necessary to ensure the functioning of artificial intelligence systems. This funding is intended, among other things, for data centers and hardware. In October, Meta chief executive officer Mark Zuckerberg announced that artificial intelligence would be the tech giant’s main investment focus in 2024.
At the same time, Nvidia will likely account for a significant part of the company’s expenses for AI in the foreseeable future. The mentioned firm produces the popular H100 graphics cards for artificial intelligence models. This year, Mark Zuckerberg announced that Meta will buy 350,000 of the mentioned graphics cards, the cost of each of which is several tens of thousands of dollars. At the same time, the tech giant has already begun to realize its aspirations to produce its own chips.
Currently, many large companies are starting to manufacture their own microcircuits. As part of the relevant efforts, Meta joins Amazon.com, Microsoft Corp., and Google. Such a desire is natural since dependence on third-party chip manufacturers is expensive and in some cases may limit the financial and technological capabilities of companies. It is worth noting that achieving the result will not be fast.
So far, against the background of scaling up the use of artificial intelligence, the demand for AI accelerators continues to grow. As part of the current state of affairs, Nvidia continues to be the main beneficiary of the so-called machine intelligence boom. If the efforts of other companies to make chips prove successful on a significant scale, the present’s position as the leader of the microcircuits manufacturing industry will weaken.
Amid the incredible popularity of artificial intelligence, Nvidia has become the third-largest technology firm in the world, behind only Microsoft and Apple Inc. The volume of sales of this company to data center operators in fiscal year 2024 amounted to $47.5 billion. In fiscal year 2023, this figure was fixed at around $15 billion.
As we have reported earlier, Intel Unveils Latest AI Chip.
