Today we're taking the next step toward our vision for a more open computing platform for the metaverse. We're opening up the operating system powering our Meta Quest devices to third-party hardware makers, giving more choice to consumers and a larger ecosystem for developers to build for. We're working with leading global technology companies to bring this new ecosystem to life and making it even easier for developers to build apps and reach their audiences on the platform.

Introducing Meta Horizon OS
This new hardware ecosystem will run on Meta Horizon OS, the mixed reality operating system that powers our Meta Quest headsets. We chose this name to reflect our vision of a computing platform built around people and connection—and the shared social fabric that makes this possible. Meta Horizon OS combines the core technologies powering today's mixed reality experiences with a suite of features that put social presence at the center of the platform.

Meta has announced the next generation of its Meta Training and Inference Accelerator (MTIA) chip, which is designed to train and infer AI models at scale. The newest MTIA chip is a second-generation design of Meta's custom silicon for AI, and it is being built on TSMC's 5 nm technology. Running at the frequency of 1.35 GHz, the new chip is getting a boost to 90 Watts of TDP per package compared to just 25 Watts for the first-generation design. Basic Linear Algebra Subprograms (BLAS) processing is where the chip shines, and it includes matrix multiplication and vector/SIMD processing. At GEMM matrix processing, each chip can process 708 TeraFLOPS at INT8 (presumably meant FP8 in the spec) with sparsity, 354 TeraFLOPS without, 354 TeraFLOPS at FP16/BF16 with sparsity, and 177 TeraFLOPS without.

Classical vector and processing is a bit slower at 11.06 TeraFLOPS at INT8 (FP8), 5.53 TeraFLOPS at FP16/BF16, and 2.76 TFLOPS single-precision FP32. The MTIA chip is specifically designed to run AI training and inference on Meta's PyTorch AI framework, with an open-source Triton backend that produces compiler code for optimal performance. Meta uses this for all its Llama models, and with Llama3 just around the corner, it could be trained on these chips. To package it into a system, Meta puts two of these chips onto a board and pairs them with 128 GB of LPDDR5 memory. The board is connected via PCIe Gen 5 to a system where 12 boards are stacked densely. This process is repeated six times in a single rack for 72 boards and 144 chips in a single rack for a total of 101.95 PetaFLOPS, assuming linear scaling at INT8 (FP8) precision. Of course, linear scaling is not quite possible in scale-out systems, which could bring it down to under 100 PetaFLOPS per rack.Below, you can see images of the chip floorplan, specifications compared to the prior version, as well as the system.

FarBridge, Inc., a leading game development studio, in partnership with Gearbox Entertainment, is excited to announce Homeworld: Vast Reaches, a bold new story in the beloved Homeworld saga that reimagines strategic space battles for Virtual Reality and Mixed Reality. This new game in the Homeworld universe is launching on the Meta Quest 2 and Meta Quest 3 headsets later this year. Players can now wishlist the game at HomeworldVastReaches.com.

In the award-winning Homeworld games for PC, you play as Fleet Command, a human commander who controls a fleet of spaceships. Players will take on the same role in Homeworld: Vast Reaches in vicious combat against a mysterious new foe.

NVIDIA's GTC 2024 AI conference will set the stage for another leap forward in AI. At the heart of this highly anticipated event: the opening keynote by Jensen Huang, NVIDIA's visionary founder and CEO, who speaks on Monday, March 18, at 1 p.m. Pacific, at the SAP Center in San Jose, California.

Planning Your GTC Experience
There are two ways to watch. Register to attend GTC in person to secure a spot for an immersive experience at the SAP Center. The center is a short walk from the San Jose Convention Center, where the rest of the conference takes place. Doors open at 11 a.m., and badge pickup starts at 10:30 a.m. The keynote will also be livestreamed at www.nvidia.com/gtc/keynote/.

When Meta acquired Oculus, it created a problem where Meta wanted to integrate the software ecosystem of the VR headsets with its common Meta accounts system that spans Facebook, Instagram, and Threads; whereas some users from the pre-acquisition days, held out on the older Oculus accounts, continuing to use them for their cloud saves, purchase information, acquired software, DLCs, and more. Meta set up a system to port these Oculus accounts over to a Meta account, which would let you retain all your digital assets; but apparently not everyone switched. Such holdouts need to switch by the end of March 29, 2024, because Meta has decided to drop the hammer on the Oculus accounts system. All Oculus accounts will simply be deleted, any purchases, DLCs, or other digital assets you have, will be lost. If you're one of the holdouts, check your e-mail for a message from Meta with a unique link to port your account.

IBM announced the availability of the popular open-source Mixtral-8x7B large language model (LLM), developed by Mistral AI, on its watsonx AI and data platform, as it continues to expand capabilities to help clients innovate with IBM's own foundation models and those from a range of open-source providers. IBM offers an optimized version of Mixtral-8x7B that, in internal testing, was able to increase throughput—or the amount of data that can be processed in a given time period—by 50 percent when compared to the regular model. This could potentially cut latency by 35-75 percent, depending on batch size—speeding time to insights. This is achieved through a process called quantization, which reduces model size and memory requirements for LLMs and, in turn, can speed up processing to help lower costs and energy consumption.

The addition of Mixtral-8x7B expands IBM's open, multi-model strategy to meet clients where they are and give them choice and flexibility to scale enterprise AI solutions across their businesses. Through decades-long AI research and development, open collaboration with Meta and Hugging Face, and partnerships with model leaders, IBM is expanding its watsonx.ai model catalog and bringing in new capabilities, languages, and modalities. IBM's enterprise-ready foundation model choices and its watsonx AI and data platform can empower clients to use generative AI to gain new insights and efficiencies, and create new business models based on principles of trust. IBM enables clients to select the right model for the right use cases and price-performance goals for targeted business domains like finance.

TrendForce underscores that the primary momentum for server shipments this year remains with American CSPs. However, due to persistently high inflation and elevated corporate financing costs curtailing capital expenditures, overall demand has not yet returned to pre-pandemic growth levels. Global server shipments are estimated to reach approximately. 13.654 million units in 2024, an increase of about 2.05% YoY. Meanwhile, the market continues to focus on the deployment of AI servers, with their shipment share estimated at around 12.1%.

Foxconn is expected to see the highest growth rate, with an estimated annual increase of about 5-7%. This growth includes significant orders such as Dell's 16G platform, AWS Graviton 3 and 4, Google Genoa, and Microsoft Gen9. In terms of AI server orders, Foxconn has made notable inroads with Oracle and has also secured some AWS ASIC orders.

LG Electronics (LG) is ramping up its strategic collaboration with the global tech powerhouse, Meta Platforms, Inc. (Meta), aiming to expedite its extended reality (XR) ventures. The aim is to combine the strengths of both companies across products, content, services and platforms to drive innovation in customer experiences within the burgeoning virtual space.

Forging an XR Collaboration With Meta
On February 28, LG's top management, including CEO William Cho and Park Hyoung-sei, president of the Home Entertainment Company, met with Meta Founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg at LG Twin Towers in Yeouido, Seoul. This meeting coincided with Zuckerberg's tour of Asia. The two-hour session saw discussions on business strategies and considerations for next-gen XR device development. CEO Cho, while experiencing the Meta Quest 3 headset and Ray-Ban Meta smart glasses, expressed a keen interest in Meta's advanced technology demonstrations, notably focusing on Meta's large language models and its potential for on-device AI integration.

Apple's Vision Pro mixed reality headset is due to launch on February 2—many rival companies in the AR/VR market space will be taking notes once the slickly designed device (with a $3499 starting price) reaches customers. The Wall Street Journal claims that the executive team at Meta is hopeful that Apple's headset carves out a larger space within a niche segment. The latter's "more experimental" products sometimes have surprising reach, although it may take a second (i.e cheaper) iteration of the Vision Pro to reach a mainstream audience. Meta is reported to have invested around $50 billion into its Quest hardware and software development push—industry experts reckon that this product line generates only ~1% of the social media giant's total revenue.

Insider sources suggest that CEO Mark Zuckerberg and his leadership team are keen to see their big money "gamble" finally pay off—Apple's next release could boost global interest in mixed reality headsets. The Wall Street Journal states that Meta staffers "see the Quest and its software ecosystem emerging as a primary alternative to Apple in the space, filling the role played by Google's Android in smartphones." They hope that the Quest's relatively reasonable cost-of-entry will look a lot more attractive when compared to the premium Vision Pro. The report also shines a light on Meta's alleged push to focus more on mixed reality applications, since taking "inspiration" from Apple's WWDC23 presentation: "In addition, some developers are simplifying their apps and favor Apple's design that allows wearers to use their eyes and fingers to control or manipulate what they see. Meta's Quest primarily relies on the use of controllers for games or applications, although it can work with finger gestures."

Microsoft is discontinuing Windows Mixed Reality. This was discovered when the company added it to a list of deprecated Windows features. The Windows Mixed Reality platform, along with its accompanying Mixed Reality Portal app, and Mixed Reality for Steam VR, are on the list. For now it is deprecated, and Microsoft says that it will be removed in a future release of Windows. Mixed Reality was released in 2017, during the thick of the VR craze in the tech industry, a time when Facebook, having acquired Oculus, and betting big on the Metaverse, an endeavor that cost the company over $20 billion since. Mixed Reality served as a gateway to games and apps in the VR space. The company developed its own HoloLens Mixed Reality headset rivaling Oculus Rift, and got its OEM partners, such as Acer, Dell, Lenovo, ASUS, and HP, to invest in ones of their own. In all this, it doesn't look like Microsoft is winding down its enterprise-focused HoloLens 2 headset just yet.

Realizing the full potential of next-generation deep learning requires highly efficient AI infrastructure. For a computing platform to be scalable and cost efficient, optimizing every layer of the AI stack, from algorithms to hardware, is essential. Advances in narrow-precision AI data formats and associated optimized algorithms have been pivotal to this journey, allowing the industry to transition from traditional 32-bit floating point precision to presently only 8 bits of precision (i.e. OCP FP8).

Narrower formats allow silicon to execute more efficient AI calculations per clock cycle, which accelerates model training and inference times. AI models take up less space, which means they require fewer data fetches from memory, and can run with better performance and efficiency. Additionally, fewer bit transfers reduces data movement over the interconnect, which can enhance application performance or cut network costs.

D-Link Corporation exclusively partnered with Meta to launch the DWA-F18 VR Air Bridge, which received rave reviews after its debut in North America last year. The DWA-F18 VR Air Bridge was released in Europe this July. This wireless adapter not only supports the Meta Quest 2 and Meta Quest Pro headsets but also the latest release of this year, the Meta Quest 3.

The DWA-F18 VR Air Bridge offers simple setup and optimized performance for Meta Quest headsets, enhancing user experience by leveraging the power of Wi-Fi 6 to establish a high-speed, low-latency connection between gaming PCs and Meta Quest headsets.

Big news from the Connect stage: Meta Quest 3 hits shelves October 10, and pre-orders are open now! The world's first mass-market mixed reality headset starts at $499.99 USD for the 128 GB version and $649.99 USD for those who want a larger storage capacity at 512 GB. But wait, there's more! For a limited time, your Meta Quest 3 purchase comes bundled with Asgard's Wrath 2 - a $59.99 USD value. And for the 512 GB SKU, we'll also kick in a six-month trial of Meta Quest+ for a combined value of over $100 USD.

Mixed Reality: Explore Like Never Before
Immersive experiences can transport you to fantastical worlds that defy the laws of physics, but the physical world—and the connections you've made there—are pretty important, too. That's why Meta Quest 3 features breakthrough mixed reality that enables a spectrum of experiences. You can watch immersive NBA games courtside or open a portal to another dimension right from the comfort of your living room - all while high-fidelity, full-color Passthrough keeps your physical surroundings in sight with over 10 times more pixels compared to Meta Quest 2.

Assassin's Creed Nexus VR will launch for Meta Quest devices - including Meta Quest 2, Meta Quest 3, and Meta Quest Pro - on November 16, enabling players to leap into a first-person virtual-reality adventure for the first time in the Assassin's Creed franchise. Embodying Assassin's Creed heroes Ezio Auditore, Connor, and Kassandra, players will parkour, climb freely across open maps, and use real-world motions to fight their way through a full-fledged Assassin's Creed adventure set across three different eras.

As an undercover hacker in the modern day, players will work from inside Abstergo to foil a plot to change people's beliefs using ancient technology. Working under Abstergo's cybersecurity chief, Dominika Wilk (played by award-winning actress Morena Baccarin), players will explore newly discovered memories from Renaissance Italy, the American Revolution, and Ancient Greece.

Meta has invested heavily in Augmented Reality (AR) devices, such as its Quest and Quest Pro devices. However, it seems like the company has received mixed feedback from the community on its AR headsets, most notably on the higher end. Meta's Quest Pro device was launched on October 25, 2022. According to The Information, Quest Pro will be manufactured as long as the supplies last at manufacturing facilities, and Meta will not order any new material for it. Additionally, Quest Pro 2, the second-generation Quest Pro, will not be released as the company has canceled its development. This is not to be confused with the regular Quest, which is still in active development.

Meta's upcoming Quest 3 will even beat the Quest Pro with its specifications, targeting lower price points and a wider audience. Quest 3 will feature a higher resolution, depth sensor, and two 4MP cameras instead of the one on Quest Pro. Logically, Quest 3 is the obvious upgrade and will cost less than $1000, unlike Quest Pro, which debuted with a $1500 price tag.

Qualcomm Technologies, Inc. and Meta are working to optimize the execution of Meta's Llama 2 large language models directly on-device - without relying on the sole use of cloud services. The ability to run generative AI models like Llama 2 on devices such as smartphones, PCs, VR/AR headsets, and vehicles allows developers to save on cloud costs, and to provide users with private, more reliable, and personalized experiences.

As a result, Qualcomm Technologies plans to make available on-device Llama 2-based AI implementations to enable the creation of new and exciting AI applications. This will allow customers, partners, and developers to build use cases, such as intelligent virtual assistants, productivity applications, content creation tools, entertainment, and more. These new on-device AI experiences, powered by Snapdragon, can work in areas with no connectivity or even in airplane mode.

Announced today, Ultra Ethernet Consortium (UEC) is bringing together leading companies for industry-wide cooperation to build a complete Ethernet-based communication stack architecture for high-performance networking. Artificial Intelligence (AI) and High-Performance Computing (HPC) workloads are rapidly evolving and require best-in-class functionality, performance, interoperability and total cost of ownership, without sacrificing developer and end-user friendliness. The Ultra Ethernet solution stack will capitalize on Ethernet's ubiquity and flexibility for handling a wide variety of workloads while being scalable and cost-effective.

Ultra Ethernet Consortium is founded by companies with long-standing history and experience in high-performance solutions. Each member is contributing significantly to the broader ecosystem of high-performance in an egalitarian manner. The founding members include AMD, Arista, Broadcom, Cisco, Eviden (an Atos Business), HPE, Intel, Meta and Microsoft, who collectively have decades of networking, AI, cloud and high-performance computing-at-scale deployments.

Mark Zuckerberg just announced the initial version of Threads, an app built by the Instagram team for sharing with text. Whether you're a creator or a casual poster, Threads offers a new, separate space for real-time updates and public conversations. We are working toward making Threads compatible with the open, interoperable social networks that we believe can shape the future of the internet.

Instagram is where billions of people around the world connect over photos and videos. Our vision with Threads is to take what Instagram does best and expand that to text, creating a positive and creative space to express your ideas. Just like on Instagram, with Threads you can follow and connect with friends and creators who share your interests - including the people you follow on Instagram and beyond. And you can use our existing suite of safety and user controls.

Whether you're a seasoned VR gamer or new to the medium, it can be hard to know where to start when exploring the Meta Quest catalog. Luckily, we're combining curation and convenience to make things a little easier. Now you can browse less and play more with Meta Quest+, your new VR subscription service.

For just $7.99 USD per month or $59.99 USD annually (a savings of over 37%), you'll get access to two hand-picked VR titles every month. And when you sign up now through July 31, you'll get your first month for $1 USD. With a combination of VR's biggest hits, hidden gems, and back-catalog classics, this is the most affordable way to grow your library with killer content.

Today, at the "Data Center and AI Technology Premiere," AMD announced the products, strategy and ecosystem partners that will shape the future of computing, highlighting the next phase of data center innovation. AMD was joined on stage with executives from Amazon Web Services (AWS), Citadel, Hugging Face, Meta, Microsoft Azure and PyTorch to showcase the technological partnerships with industry leaders to bring the next generation of high performance CPU and AI accelerator solutions to market.

"Today, we took another significant step forward in our data center strategy as we expanded our 4th Gen EPYC processor family with new leadership solutions for cloud and technical computing workloads and announced new public instances and internal deployments with the largest cloud providers," said AMD Chair and CEO Dr. Lisa Su. "AI is the defining technology shaping the next generation of computing and the largest strategic growth opportunity for AMD. We are laser focused on accelerating the deployment of AMD AI platforms at scale in the data center, led by the launch of our Instinct MI300 accelerators planned for later this year and the growing ecosystem of enterprise-ready AI software optimized for our hardware."

Mark Zuckerberg just announced Meta Quest 3, our next-generation virtual and mixed reality headset, which launches later this year. It features higher resolution, stronger performance, breakthrough Meta Reality technology, and a slimmer, more comfortable form factor. Quest 3 will ship in all countries where Meta Quest is currently supported this fall. The 128 GB headset starts at $499.99 USD, and we'll offer an additional storage option for those who want some extra space. Mark your calendars because we'll have lots more to share at Meta Connect, which returns this year on September 27.

Quest 3 is the supercharged all-in-one headset you've been waiting for—no wires required. Sign up to be the first to learn about Meta Quest 3.

TrendForce forecasts a global downturn in AR and VR device shipments for 2023, predicting a shipment total of roughly 7.45 million units—an 18.2% YoY decrease. VR devices are expected to shoulder the majority of this decline, with projected shipments hovering around 6.67 million units. This dip is primarily attributed to weaker-than-expected sales of newly released high-end devices. Consequently, manufacturers are likely to pivot their sales strategies, shifting their focus to more cost-effective offerings. Conversely, shipments of AR devices are expected to remain stable, with projected shipments exceeding 780,000 units. While Apple's latest offerings could stimulate some demand, the high price tags attached to these units continue to pose a significant barrier to broader market growth.

Two key factors emerge when examining the impending decline in shipments in the VR sector. Firstly, brands may have been overly optimistic regarding the sales of their top-tier products. Despite these premium devices offering enhanced features courtesy of advanced hardware and software, consumers are showing reluctance to shoulder the associated higher costs. Instead, they seem to be gravitating towards more budget-friendly models this year. Secondly, the shortage of appealing, new, cost-effective models in the market is exacerbating the downturn. Meta Quest 2 continues to maintain its status as this year's market-leading VR product as the release of Meta Quest 3 has been pushed back to 2024.

We're back: The Meta Quest Gaming Showcase returns June 1 at 10:00 am PT on Twitch, Facebook, YouTube (plus YouTube in Japan), and in Meta Horizon Worlds.

This is a banner year for VR, and the third annual Meta Quest Gaming Showcase is our biggest celebration of the depth and breadth of content across the Meta Quest Platform yet. We'll have over 40 minutes of content, including a brand-new pre-show of game updates and debut trailers to help you count down before the Showcase kicks into high gear, as well as a post-show developer roundtable for a deep-dive conversation around some upcoming games. And as in years past, you can expect new game announcements, gameplay first-looks, updates to existing games, and more during the main event.

Facebook's parent company, Meta, has announced that revenues generated by advertisement sales have improved fortunes, following on from three quarters of consistent slumps. It has reported an operating profit of $5.7 billion for the first quarter of 2023, this announcement arrives as a surprise to business analysts - their calculations predicted yet another decline in advertising sales for Q1 '23. Mark Zuckerberg - co-founder, executive chairman and CEO of Meta Platforms - has informed his investors that artificial intelligence-assisted systems have directed more user traffic to its social media platforms. Reels and Instagram have experienced the most user population growth, thanks to Meta's AI-driven recommendation system boosting engagement by 24% for the latter platform. The company's leader stated that AI-related operations are set to expand into generative tasking, visual creation tools (for Instagram) and business chatbots.

Meta is continuing to streamline its operations in 2023 - Zuckerberg has previously outlined plans for a year of "efficiency" with extensive plans already underway to reduce company-wide headcounts. 10,000 positions are set to be cut this year, and press coverage from last week revealed that Meta's gaming divisions being hit hard in terms of layoffs. Reports suggest that a third of the team at Ready at Dawn, an Oculus Rift-oriented development studio, were let go throughout that period. The social media and technology let go of 13,000 employees last year due to reduced profits margins. A return to better fortunes has not resulted in an immediate slowdown of headcount reduction - Meta is expected to carry on implementing its 2023 efficiency initiative.

Meta Platforms, Inc. (formerly known as Facebook) has begun implementing widespread staff layoffs across multiple company departments. The cutback operation was announced last month, with the social media giant targeting 10,000 positions (throughout 2023) in an effort to become more efficient. 13,000 staffers were released from their jobs last year, representing 13% of the workforce at the time - advertising revenues had declined in 2022 and Meta said that the change was required in order to navigate economic downturns. A repeat of that sentiment has been issued this year and two internal games development studios have been affected quite heavily by the latest layoff initiative, reports suggest. Ready at Dawn and Downpour Interactive are getting a lot of press coverage - due to former staffers divulging details of Meta's cutbacks via social media.

Thomas Griebel, a (now former) Senior engine programmer at Ready at Dawn, took to Twitter two days ago and made claim that: "One third of the studio was laid off today, including the studio head." He also observes that the studio has been shrinking over time: "Also lost some really great people just due to attrition. Think we're down almost (down to a) half since when I started in August (2022)." Former Ready at Dawn technical designer Colin McInerney has also released a string of information about co-workers being let go. Michael Tsarouhas (senior designer) and Daan van Zelst (level designer) have confirmed that they were released from their roles at Downpour Interactive.