Shulou(Shulou.com)11/24 Report--

Qualcomm and Facebook parent company Meta have signed a multi-year agreement to jointly develop a customized version of Qualcomm's Snapdragon XR chip for "future roadmap of Quest products" and "other devices", Beijing time.

In some ways, these moves are normal business moves, because the Quest 2 uses the Qualcomm Snapdragon XR2 chip. However, this may help outsiders gain a deeper understanding of how Meta will compromise in the face of declining revenues to control the high costs of metasmos.

The cooperation with Qualcomm shows that Meta's upcoming head display, including the high-end display codenamed Cambria and the low-cost version of Quest, will not fully use chips designed by Meta. Meanwhile, Meta's competitors, such as Apple, Amazon and Google, are making product decisions around customized chip designs such as M2, Graviton3 and Tensor. Meta itself has set up a special team to do similar work since 2018.

According to a press release on the cooperation between the two sides, these Qualcomm chips will be "customized" according to the needs of Meta. However, it is not clear how much difference will be made between Meta's "high-end devices" and other manufacturers' hardware. Other products are likely to strictly follow the reference design of Qualcomm Snapdragon XR.

It was reported in April that Meta employees were working with chip foundry to produce customized chips for augmented reality headsets that have not yet been announced. In the same month, it was also reported that Meta had encountered some obstacles in the production of customized chips, forcing it to use Qualcomm chips instead of Qualcomm chips in second-generation Ray-Bay smart glasses.

A spokesman for Meta said that Meta would not discuss the details of the evolution of the product roadmap, nor would it comment on Quest's plans to adopt custom chips. However, Meta's overall strategy for customized chips is that there is no one-size-fits-all approach to the technologies used in future devices.

"there may be situations where we use off-the-shelf chips or work with industry partners to customize, while exploring our own new chip solutions," the spokesman said. it is also possible that we will use both partner products and customized solutions in the same product. Everything we do is to create the best meta-cosmic experience possible. "

There are other signs that Meta's virtual reality and augmented reality businesses have shrunk. Meta currently uses Android in Quest headers, but there are reports that the company is developing its own operating system for virtual reality and augmented reality devices. There are media reports that Meta has suspended a project called XROS, which may involve the operating system. Meta responded to the report that the company was "still developing highly specialized operating systems for our devices." However, the "microkernel-based operating system" being developed by Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg (Mark Zuckerberg) in 2021 has yet to be unveiled.

The background of all this is that Meta is under tremendous pressure. Meta's revenue fell for the first time this year as Apple's changes to the privacy settings of its iOS system affected precision advertising. Zuckerberg made it clear that he plans to increase the pressure on employees. "I think some of you might say that this is not the right place for you," he said. I have no problem with this choice. " At the same time, he made a big bet on meta-cosmic strategy. Meta spends billions of dollars every year on projects in this area, including augmented reality and virtual reality, but suffers huge losses.

For Meta, this is a risky competition. But for now, users who access Zuckerberg's envisioned meta-universe through Meta hardware will continue to use chips from other manufacturers.

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