Meta relies more on ARM for AI on Facebook and Instagram

Meta Platforms is deepening its collaboration with ARM. The Facebook parent and the chip designers have entered into a multi-year strategic partnership. Instead of using the widespread solutions from Nvidia, AMD, or Intel, Meta will use products based on ARM architectures in data centers. For this purpose, the corresponding software has already been adapted by Meta and ARM to run with infrastructures based on ARM's Neoverse cores.

ARM announced the CPU cores of the current server processor generation back at the beginning of 2024. With Neoverse V3 and N3, ARM is making a bid to take on AMD, Intel, and partly Nvidia. These are suitable for processors with up to 128 cores and are expected to offer significant speed advantages compared to their predecessors, especially for AI algorithms. This should also benefit Meta's AI for rankings and recommendations. ARM also emphasizes higher energy efficiency compared to x86 solutions.

ARM emphasizes efficiency and scalability, Meta user numbers

“The next era of AI will be defined by the delivery of efficiency at scale,” explains ARM CEO Rene Haas in a company statement. “By partnering with Meta, we are combining ARM's leading performance per watt with Meta's AI innovation to deliver smarter, more efficient intelligence everywhere -- from milliwatt to megawatt.”

“From the experiences on our platforms to the devices we build, AI is transforming how people connect and create,” adds Meta's Head of Infrastructure, Santosh Janardhan. “Partnering with ARM allows us to efficiently scale this innovation to the more than three billion people who use Meta's apps and technologies.”

New Meta Data Centers Likely with ARM

The companies do not disclose specific hardware projects or payments, but the partnership is likely to be implemented in new server farms. In July, Meta announced the construction of gigawatt-scale data centers. The project, codenamed “Prometheus,” for several gigawatts of power, is currently being built in the US state of Ohio and is expected to go online in 2026. Meta is also building a massive data center called “Hyperion” in northwest Louisiana, which is expected to deliver 5 gigawatts of computing power upon completion. These construction works will, according to Data Center Frontier, likely continue until 2030, although some areas may go online sooner.

Unlike recent collaborations in the AI sector, Meta Platforms and ARM are not exchanging company stakes. No hardware is being delivered either. Just a few days ago, it was announced that OpenAI is buying AMD GPUs for billions of US dollars, but in return is investing in AMD. Shortly thereafter, it was reported that Nvidia is reportedly investing two billion US dollars in xAI, whereby a special purpose vehicle is being created that buys AI accelerators from Nvidia and then leases them to xAI.

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