Facebook To Design Its Own Chips For Real-Time Content Filtering

[Lucian Armasu]

Facebook announces plans to design its own machine learning processors that will allow it to take down content in real-time.

Facebook To Design Its Own Chips For Real-Time Content Filtering : Read more

 

[bit_user]

Something tells me this real-time filtering of all live streams is a stretch goal. Maybe something they can start to think about, after getting a couple generations under their belt.

On the other hand, I do think it's plausible they could deploy real-time filtering based on speech recognition. And that might work well enough to eliminate the majority of certain types of content.

I also think we're going to see some of thees homegrown efforts fizzle, after they build one generation of hardware and look around to see how many of their competitors & potential suppliers have far surpassed their efforts. Google was really ahead of the curve, on this one. Not everybody is a Google.

 

[therealduckofdeath]

Designed to help users, will be used to exploit. Facebook is one of those companies having as much connection to reality as the spam abusers they pretend they've got control over now. What was it they said they automatically filtered now? 99 point something percent? I call BS. Just look at any comment section using Facebook and you'll see infinitely more spam today compared to last year. "I make $$$$$ sitting at my computer posting this spam, so a scam company can use my processor power to <insert-your-desired-malice-here>". Facebook is doing as little to counter spam and scams today as they were five years ago. Best scenario they'll keep doing that, worst (most likely) scenario they'll just use these processors to ramp it up.

 

[mlee 2500]

Yeah, Qualcomm went down the path of developing low-power data-center CPU's....Centriq..and recently decided the performance wasn't there with the ARM architecture. Not sure how a software company thinks they can do better.

This smells more like a public relations vapor project.

 

[bit_user]

Yeah, Qualcomm went down the path of developing low-power data-center CPU's....Centriq..and recently decided the performance wasn't there with the ARM architecture.

No, the reason for bailing was financial, from what I've read. Performance actually looked strong, but the speculation I've seen was that their investors felt the financial upside didn't justify the continued expenditures.

Talk about a company being a victim of its own success...

Not sure how a software company thinks they can do better.

Because machine learning hardware is vastly simpler. That's why everybody is coming out of the woodwork with their own new deep learning chip. Seriously, the number of different chips and engines that have been announced is getting ridiculous.

This smells more like a public relations vapor project.

What would they have to gain by that? The public cares about actual content filtering. Not about how they do it. As long as they aren't filtering what people should, they'll continue to complain.

The only advantage I see from this being a bluff is if they're trying to get a price break on hardware from other chip makers. But the market is so crowded with these things that you don't need your own vapor ware to play off against vendors - you can simply play off the vendors against each other. And vendors will be some of the best at detecting a bluff.

To me, the mystery is why they think they can do it better than anyone else, and by a big enough margin to justify the investment. But maybe it's more of a bragging contest with Google (another software company that has some of the fastest deep learning chips known).

 

[dhayric]

"Facebook wants to be able to filter content, including live video streams, in real-time"

Dollars to doughnuts says conservative views and content will face the most filtering.

 

[mlee 2500]

Yeah, Qualcomm went down the path of developing low-power data-center CPU's....Centriq..and recently decided the performance wasn't there with the ARM architecture.

No, the reason for bailing was financial, from what I've read. Performance actually looked strong, but the speculation I've seen was that their investors felt the financial upside didn't justify the continued expenditures.

Talk about a company being a victim of its own success...

Not sure how a software company thinks they can do better.

Because machine learning hardware is vastly simpler. That's why everybody is coming out of the woodwork with their own new deep learning chip. Seriously, the number of different chips and engines that have been announced is getting ridiculous.

This smells more like a public relations vapor project.

What would they have to gain by that? The public cares about actual content filtering. Not about how they do it. As long as they aren't filtering what people should, they'll continue to complain.

The only advantage I see from this being a bluff is if they're trying to get a price break on hardware from other chip makers. But the market is so crowded with these things that you don't need your own vapor ware to play off against vendors - you can simply play off the vendors against each other. And vendors will be some of the best at detecting a bluff.

To me, the mystery is why they think they can do it better than anyone else, and by a big enough margin to justify the investment. But maybe it's more of a bragging contest with Google (another software company that has some of the fastest deep learning chips known).

Nearly everything a company does is based on the Financial returns (or at least should be). The market and value proposition of Centriq was tied to it's performance and cost savings (in this case, power and cooling overhead). To say Centriq had "strong" performance running datacenter loads and applications is a stretch, and I say that as one of the few people who got their hands on the reference design models. There's also problems with simply getting OS's and Apps not only compiled, but *optimized* for a new platform. It's an uphill battle. No, the performance was NOT sufficient even when considering the power and cooling savings. If it were, then the Value Proposition to customers would have made it Financially Viable for Qualcomm.

But yeah, it's just one more in a long line of products Qualcomm successfully engineered and developed, only to see the market never materialize (Globalstar, MediaFlo, Centriq....I'd even say Mirasol, but it had technical difficulties being delivered, unlike the others).

As far as what does Facebook gain with it as a PR stunt? That's easy and obvious. You might have noticed them getting beat up by privacy issues lately, and Zuckerberg grasping for positive news when he gets grilled by Congress and the EU. Announcing efforts like this, even if entirely academic, makes them look like they're serious about addressing the problem. As you said, the market is already quickly getting saturated by companies with more semiconductor experience.

 

[bit_user]

To say Centriq had "strong" performance running datacenter loads and applications is a stretch, and I say that as one of the few people who got their hands on the reference design models. There's also problems with simply getting OS's and Apps not only compiled, but *optimized* for a new platform. It's an uphill battle. No, the performance was NOT sufficient even when considering the power and cooling savings.

Thanks for sharing. It's always good to hear first-hand experiences.

If it were, then the Value Proposition to customers would have made it Financially Viable for Qualcomm.

What I had read wasn't that it couldn't be profitable, but that it wouldn't generate enough profit, thereby watering down Qualcomm's overall profitability. I don't know if that's true, but it's not inconceivable that even a successful product might still be regarded as disappointment by Wall St.

You can read a lot of such musings over here:

https://www.anandtech.com/comments/12755/qualcomms-server-lead-anand-chandrasekher-leaves-company

 

[stdragon]

Maybe instead they can just reverse-engineer the positron brain inside Zucks head. If only he had an emotion chip......

 

[mlee 2500]

Thanks for the article link...it's interesting to read Qualcomm, whose mobile phone margins have for several years now suffered from commoditization and increased competition from lower cost shops like Mediatek, decide that what I assumed to be a diversification play would not be profitable enough. Perhaps they looked at all their other new-market projects (Automotive, VR, ARM laptops) and decided that Centriq was the one to be sacrificed for their limited development resources and desire to be more focused.

In either event, I feel for the hundreds of engineers and other folks who for years must have poured allot of blood, sweat, and tears into the Centriq product to make it functionally viable, only to see it shelved.

To say Centriq had "strong" performance running datacenter loads and applications is a stretch, and I say that as one of the few people who got their hands on the reference design models. There's also problems with simply getting OS's and Apps not only compiled, but *optimized* for a new platform. It's an uphill battle. No, the performance was NOT sufficient even when considering the power and cooling savings.

Thanks for sharing. It's always good to hear first-hand experiences.

If it were, then the Value Proposition to customers would have made it Financially Viable for Qualcomm.

What I had read wasn't that it couldn't be profitable, but that it wouldn't generate enough profit, thereby watering down Qualcomm's overall profitability. I don't know if that's true, but it's not inconceivable that even a successful product might still be regarded as disappointment by Wall St.

You can read a lot of such musings over here:

https://www.anandtech.com/comments/12755/qualcomms-server-lead-anand-chandrasekher-leaves-company

 

[bit_user]

In either event, I feel for the hundreds of engineers and other folks who for years must have poured allot of blood, sweat, and tears into the Centriq product to make it functionally viable, only to see it shelved.

Worse yet, if this was only to appease some short/medium-term investors. Qualcomm has been on the receiving end of activist investors' litigation, before. Basically, accusing them of spending too much on R&D, I guess instead of paying dividends. Maybe that's why Qualcomm's later Kyro cores are just tweaked versions of ARM's existing cores.

Anyway, it could always get sold. Someone like Apple or Amazon could even buy it, if they wanted their own cloud platform.

 

[mlee 2500]

In either event, I feel for the hundreds of engineers and other folks who for years must have poured allot of blood, sweat, and tears into the Centriq product to make it functionally viable, only to see it shelved.

Worse yet, if this was only to appease some short/medium-term investors. Qualcomm has been on the receiving end of activist investors' litigation, before. Basically, accusing them of spending too much on R&D, I guess instead of paying dividends. Maybe that's why Qualcomm's later Kyro cores are just tweaked versions of ARM's existing cores.

Yeah, it's ironic that their moves to appease Janus and, later, stockholders disappointed by the Broadcomm failure, are COMPLETELY contrary to the reasons Trump and the FTC gave for not approving the deal: That Qualcomm was too valuable as an RD Innovation house. So, the Broadcomm deal gets nixed on that basis and Qualcomm then turns around and models themselves more on their low cost competition...similar to what Hock Tan wanted to do all along. Qualcomm has even gone so far as to recently announce that Chinese partners, not domestic or European ones, are most likely to make 5G fly.

https://www.ft.com/content/abe95660-5e2a-11e8-9334-2218e7146b04

It's so weird.