【Michael Maien】

Facebook is Michael Maienassembling a team to design proprietary semiconductors.

The social network seeks a manager to head an “end-to-end SoC/ASIC, firmware and driver development organization,” reports Bloomberg, citing job listings and sources familiar with the matter.

It's not yet clear what exactly these chips will power. The job posting seeks “expertise to build custom solutions targeted at multiple verticals including AI/ML" (artificial intelligence and machine learning).

This means we could be looking at something that's going to power the AI in Facebook's upcoming smart speaker, which the company planned to announce in July, but delayed indefinitely among the kerfuffle of Cambridge Analytica. Amazon is also at work on in-house AI chips to power Alexa in future Echo models.

It's also possible that the semiconductors could power Oculus products. Facebook is releasing its standalone Oculus Go headset next month, currently equipped with a Qualcomm processor. Proprietary chips would reduce Facebook's dependence on outside manufacturers, and allow the company to better integrate its VR hardware and software.

A SoC (system on chip) integrates what we'd think of as a full computer system into a single circuit (motherboard, processor graphics card, etc.) and most commonly power smartphones. An ASIC, meanwhile, is tailor-made for a specific application (for example, they're popular among Bitcoin miners.)

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