Apple does it, Google does it, and it requires an educated team of engineers to do it, so Facebook decided "let's do it," let's design our own chips, too.
As Bloomberg reports, although there has been no public confirmation that Facebook intends to design its own chips, a new job listing on the company's careers portal suggests it's happening. Facebook wants to hire an ASIC Development Manager with the skill set to "Build and manage an end-to-end SoC/ASIC, firmware and driver development organization," which would include "silicon architecture, micro-architecture, RTL development, Verification, FPGA emulation, co-simulation, simulation acceleration, synthesis, DFT, floor planning, physical design place and route, DRC, LVS and GDS II stream out, and post-silicon validation."
In fact, it's not the only hardware-related post to appear on Facebook's job listings. There's also an opening for a system-on-a-chip architect for Oculus, firmware engineers, hardware designers, and a technical program manager. These positions fall into Facebook's Oculus, hardware engineering, and infrastructure departments.
Apple now uses its own chip designs across most hardware products. By doing so, it can tweak the design to suit each product while reducing risk by not having to rely on a chip partner such as Imagination Technologies. Google designed its own Tensor chips for artificial intelligence.
Facebook would have multiple uses for its own chip designs. They could be developed for datacenter servers, for future Oculus VR products where power efficiency is vital, and for any new hardware products the company chooses to launch. For example, we were meant to be getting a Facebook smart speaker in the fall, but it has since been delayed.
As Facebook is only now advertising for hardware people, new chips likely won't appear for a few years yet. However, this news is not good for companies such as Intel, AMD, and mobile chip makers such as Qualcomm or Samsung. The more big tech companies decide to make their own chips, the less business there is for them.