TikTok Owner ByteDance Explores Self-Designed Chips (cnbc.com) 20
According to CNBC, TikTok owner ByteDance is looking into designing its own chips because it says it hasn't been able to find suppliers that can meet its requirements. From the report: The chips will be customized to deal with workloads related to ByteDance's multiple business areas including video platforms, information and entertainment apps, the spokesperson added. ByteDance won't be manufacturing chips for sale to other companies. The social media giant has multiple job openings on its website for roles related to semiconductor design. The Beijing-headquartered firm's push into semiconductor design plays into two major themes -- an increasing focus from companies to create chips for specific purposes, as well as the Chinese government's push to become stronger in this fundamental technology.
What is the purpose of these chips? (Score:2)
Re: What is the purpose of these chips? (Score:3, Informative)
Sending data back to their real owner, China
Good luck with that (Score:2)
Facebook tried, Google tried... the trail of bodies for consumer companies that attempted to build their own semiconductors is long and distinguished.
Re: (Score:2)
It's not only a "semiconductors" thing. Why do social media companies keep trying to make *any* hardware?!
Re: (Score:2)
It's not only a "semiconductors" thing. Why do social media companies keep trying to make *any* hardware?!
When you have a metric fuckton of money to blow every year, you tend to get into all sorts of odd ventures.
Why it seems like it was only last century that some generic millionaire who goes by the name of Bezos was just a bookseller. Now he's blasting rockets into space.
Next year they'll be buying governments.
Re: (Score:2)
"Why do social media companies keep trying to make *any* hardware?!"
Because they use a lot of hardware. Much of the cost of hardware is the non-recurring effort of the design; the marginal costs are almost nothing. So if you are dealing in very high volumes of hardware you can amortize the design effort with the savings over using general purpose hardware.
Re: Good luck with that (Score:2)
Would you like to buy a Google USB TPU AI accelerator from Amazon? [a.co]. They also have extensive custom silicon deployed in their datacenters for YouTube encode/decode image recognition and language transcription.
Years ago they borged a company making custom network switches with custom silicon and they continue to deploy that.
Another example would be the custom tensor chip in the pixel smartphone.
Re: (Score:2)
"Facebook tried, Google tried... the trail of bodies for consumer companies that attempted to build their own semiconductors is long and distinguished."
Both Facebook and Google use a lot of custom ICs for internal use. Where they may not have been successful is consumer products, but that is hardly the whole of the industry.
Surprising (Score:2)
How the hell do they expect to accomplish this? (Score:2)
What? (Score:2)
A CPU designed by tiktokkers? You fucking kidding me?
Re:What? (Score:5, Funny)
Re: (Score:2)
If this happens (Score:1)