Facebook designs chips for filtering live video

Facebook confirms it is designing its own chips. These are energy-efficient chips that the company will use for real-time analysis of live video, for example to immediately take images of suicides offline.

The reason Facebook designs the chips itself is that video monitoring systems based on conventional processors require an enormous amount of computing power and power. Video, both recorded and live, is gaining ground at Facebook and the company is under pressure to prevent unwanted images from reaching viewers.

“There is a huge drive to design chips that work more efficiently for that. A large number of companies are working on it, including Facebook,” confirms the company’s chief executive of artificial intelligence, Yann LeCun. He did this during the Viva Technology conference in Paris, Bloomberg writes. According to LeCun, more and more software companies are turning to hardware, in this case to optimize chips for image recognition.

LeCun points out that Facebook already develops its own servers, motherboards and network switches. In April, it was announced that Facebook will be designing its own chips after job postings surfaced that indicated the company was looking for asic and fpga designers.