ByteDance, the proprietor of the TikTok social media app, has begun to rent specialists to develop its datacenter system-on-chips (SoCs). ByteDance will be a part of a number of high-tech Chinese language firms that just lately rolled out their very own information middle SoCs designed to work on particular workloads.
To date, ByteDance has posted 31 chip-related openings on its web site, stories TMTPost. Thirty-one chip engineers will barely have the ability to construct a complicated processor, however what they might do is create a set of design necessities for contract chip builders, akin to Alchip. Then, as soon as a contract chip developer creates an applicable design, a contract maker of semiconductors (like TSMC) will mass produce it for ByteDance.
For now, ByteDance solely says it plans to develop its chips with out elaborating. Sometimes, chip design cycles take years, so we’ll solely study in regards to the firm’s SoCs a couple of years later.
What precisely ByteDance plans to develop is an enormous query. CNBC (opens in new tab) cites a spokesperson from the corporate that the info middle grade system-on-chip from the social media big will assist numerous enterprise areas, together with video platforms, data, and leisure apps. In the meantime, a number of China-based sources (akin to) point out that ByteDance is wanting ahead to designing synthetic intelligence chips.
ByteDance’s key enterprise is its TikTok media app, so it might be logical for the corporate to develop an SoC akin to Google’s Argos video (trans)coding (VCU) to transcode video streams uploaded by TikTok customers. In the meantime, to additional cut back energy consumption, site visitors, and storage capacities utilized by TikTok datacenters, ByteDance might introduce all-new codecs or AI algorithms. Moreover, including AI enhancements might enhance picture high quality.
ByteDance will likely be yet one more China-based cloud big that develops its chips. For instance, Alibaba has its personal AI inference chip and general-purpose processor. In the meantime, Baidu has its personal Kunlun AI processor. Tencent additionally has its processors for numerous cloud workloads.
