Meta was one of the first companies to build its RISC-V-based chips for AI inference several years ago to cut costs and reduce reliance on Nvidia. Reuters reports that the company went one step further and designed (presumably with Broadcom's assistance) its in-house accelerator for AI training. If the chip meets Meta's goals, it may reduce its reliance on high-end Nvidia AI GPUs —such as H100/H200 and B100/B200—for training advanced large-language models.
Meta and Broadcom have taped out Meta's first AI training accelerator with TSMC; the latter produced the first working samples of these chips, and the partners have successfully brought up the unit, according to the report. By now, Meta has started with a limited deployment of the accelerator, assessing its performance before scaling up production and deployment. It is unclear whether Meta's engineers are running benchmarks on the new chip; it has already been deployed to make some useful work.
