Meta and MediaTek will cooperate to develop a dedicated chip for AR glasses

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任何为Meta开发的芯片都不会提供给其他AR眼镜品牌

(XR Navigation Network November 17, 2023) At the 2023 MediaTek Chip Summit in Laguna Beach, California, Meta and MediaTek announced that they will jointly develop chip products for AR glasses. It is worth mentioning that MediaTek emphasized that this is an exclusive partnership, which means that any chips developed by MediaTek for Meta will not be provided to other AR glasses brands.

Vincece Hu, Deputy General Manager of United Development Corporation and Jeann Boufarhat, Vice President of Meta Reality Labs

Meta has always hoped to imitate Apple and achieve full-stack independence in the field of XR headsets. But the vision suffered repeated setbacks. According to The Information, Meta once cooperated with Samsung to use AR glasses chips, but it eventually broke down due to differences as independent research and development plans were frustrated. Now, Meta has found a new partner: MediaTek.

In fact, MediaTek is no stranger to AR/VR. Sony’s PSVR 2 head display is equipped with an XR-specific chip developed by the chip company.

Meta said at the Chip Summit that AR glasses require high performance, low power consumption, low latency and compact design, so "new chips need to be developed" and MediaTek is a "key partner" to achieve this goal.

Currently, the Ray-Ban Meta smart glasses developed by Meta and Ray-Ban use Qualcomm Snapdragon AR1 Gen 1 SoC. Of course, these aren't real AR glasses. At the meeting, Meta repeatedly emphasized that the AR chip was developed in cooperation with MediaTek.

However, the two parties did not disclose further details, including time and functions, but only said that AR glasses equipped with MediaTek chips will meet you at some point in the future. But according to an earlier report by The Information, Meta’s first AR glasses are expected to be released in 2027.

It should be noted that it is unclear whether Meta will continue to cooperate with Qualcomm to develop AR glasses chips. It’s unclear whether Meta will choose multi-line promotion or simply rely on MediaTek R&D to develop AR chips.