Meta announced recently a partnership agreement with Qualcomm, a mobile chip manufacturer that produces chips for the metaverse. The agreement will allow Meta to use Qualcomm’s XR technology, designed for extended and virtual reality tasks, to design and manufacture silicon to be put in the next line of Meta’s VR application, including future headsets for its Meta Quest line of products.
Qualcomm and Meta will bring the Metaverse into Chips
Meta has tended to be more concerned with the physical side of computing so far. However, the company is working to make its chips more efficient and more powerful. Qualcomm, the most powerful fabless mobile chip manufacturer in the country, has signed a partnership to assist the company with the production of silicon that is specifically tailored to meet metaverse requirements.
The custom chips will use Qualcomm’s XR technology, which includes virtual reality and extended reality functions. Cristiano Amon, Qualcomm’s CEO, spoke out about the value of this partnership.
Based on our combined leadership in XR this agreement will allow us to offer best-in-class experiences and devices to transform our work, play and learn and to connect with a full realized metaverse.
The multi-year agreement, which was announced without any numbers, included a press release that stated the engineering teams from each company would deepen their cooperation to attain joint VR objectives.
To Keep Moving Forward with Custom Silicon
Qualcomm XR chips make up the latest generation of Meta Quest 2 headsets. They are based on a Qualcomm Snapdragon865 chip. It is a dated chip introduced in 2019. This partnership aims to make chips with advanced design to enable metaverse developments. The chips will be different than those designed for mobile task-oriented chips.
About the development, Meta’s CEO Mark Zuckerberg declared:
We are developing more sophisticated capabilities for virtual and augment reality and it is important that we develop new technologies that will power the future VR headsets. Building virtual reality is a different experience than mobile phones. It presents new, multidimensional challenges, including cost and form factors.
Zuckerberg confirmed that the next generation of Meta Quest headsets would use chips from this partnership.
Qualcomm’s interest in the metaverse is not new, as the company launched a $100 million metaverse fund to deploy capital in virtual reality and metaverse venture investments in March. Qualcomm’s CEO has stated that the metaverse industry will be a “very big” opportunity, creating a new market.
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