Facebook in an effort to further its ongoing development of AI-based chips, has hired one of Google’s lead chip developers – Shahriar Rabii. Previously Senior Director of Engineering at Google, Rabii has taken up the role of Vice President and Head of Silicon at Facebook, following the almost seven-year stint at Google.
As reported Shahriar Rabii has been hired by Facebook to be the Vice President and Head of Silicon. At Facebook, Rabii is said to work under Andrew Bosworth, the company’s AR (augmented reality) and VR (virtual reality) chief, the report adds.
Rabii’s Technology Engineering team was formed to execute on core technologies and innovate on hardware products including phones, laptops, Google Home, Nest, AR/ VR, accessories and the core technologies included imaging, displays, wireless systems, sensors, audio, power systems, batteries. He released several products to mass production including Pixel Visual Core for ML and computational photography, Titan family of secure elements, VP9 and AV1 video transcoders and others.
As part of its ongoing efforts to increase its presence in the hardware market, Facebook could use AI-based chips to power hardware devices such as smart speakers and virtual reality headsets such as its Oculus Go and Oculus Rift headsets, apart from artificial intelligence software and servers in its data centres. Future generations of its products could be improved by custom chipsets and by using its own processors, Facebook would have finer control over product development and would be able to better tune its software and hardware together.
