Facebook’s parent company Meta Platforms announced Friday a significant partnership with Amazon Web Services that will see the social media giant utilize Amazon’s custom-designed Graviton5 processor chips in a deal worth billions of dollars over multiple years.
The arrangement will involve Meta using “tens of millions of cores” from Amazon’s Graviton processors. Each individual chip contains 192 cores that can be allocated to various computing tasks, according to the companies.
Although graphics processing units from companies like Nvidia continue to be crucial for developing artificial intelligence models, central processing units like Amazon’s Graviton chips are often used to run these AI systems once they’re completed and operational.
The processor market is experiencing renewed growth driven by artificial intelligence demand, with Intel reporting this week that CPU prices are climbing as orders increase significantly.
Amazon Web Services has been creating its proprietary processors internally since 2018 and is currently manufacturing its fifth-generation chip through Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co.
“We pass that savings on to the customers,” said Nafea Bshara, vice president and distinguished engineer at Amazon Web Services, confirming the Meta partnership would extend across multiple years with a value reaching billions of dollars.
This latest agreement adds to Meta’s portfolio of major processor partnerships, which includes previous contracts with Nvidia and Advanced Micro Devices, plus collaborative work with Arm Holdings on their latest CPU technology.
“As we scale the infrastructure behind Meta’s AI ambitions, diversifying our compute sources is a strategic imperative,” stated Santosh Janardhan, head of infrastructure at Meta.
