Meta’s chip deal with Qualcomm , Qualcomm and Meta have signed a multi-year agreement promising to team up on custom versions of Qualcomm’s Snapdragon XR chips for the “future roadmap of Quest products” and “other devices,” as Mark Zuckerberg put it.

Metas chip deal with Qualcomm may reflect its unrealized VR ambitions

Qualcomm and Meta have signed a multi-year agreement promising to team up on custom versions of Qualcomm’s Snapdragon XR chips for the “future roadmap of Quest products” and “other devices,” as Mark Zuckerberg put it. While, in some ways, the move is business as usual the Quest 2 is powered by the Snapdragon XR2 chipset Meta’s chip deal with Qualcomm , it could provide insight into Meta’s compromises as it faces declines in revenue and tries to keep the spiraling expenses of Mark’s metaverse project in check. What the Qualcomm deal shows is that Meta’s upcoming headsets, which reportedly include a high-end headset codenamed Cambria and, later, new versions of its cheaper Quest headset, won’t run on completely customized Meta-designed silicon.

This is despite competing companies like Apple, Amazon, and Google making product decisions around custom chip designs like M2, Graviton3, and Tensor — and the fact that Meta’s had a team dedicated to doing the same since 2018Meta’s chip deal with Qualcomm , . This press release says the chips will be “customized” for Meta’s needs. Still, we don’t know how much space that can put between its “premium” devices and other manufacturers’ hardware that hews closely to Qualcomm’s Snapdragon XR reference designs. In April, The Verge reported that Meta employees were working with semiconductor fabs — the companies that actually produce the physical chips — to make custom chips for its as-of-yet unannounced AR headset. That same month, The Information reported that some of Meta’s efforts to create custom chips were hitting roadblocks, pushing it to use a Qualcomm chip for its second-gen Ray-Bay smart glasses instead of its own silicon.

Source: This news is originally published by theverge

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