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VR Boosted by Meta-Qualcomm Deal

FILE: Francis Mwangi, 13, uses an Oculus virtual reality (VR) headset, to virtually visit Buckingham Palace during the celebration of Britain's Queen Elizabeth's Platinum Jubilee, in Nyeri, Kenya. Taken 6.2.2022
FILE: Francis Mwangi, 13, uses an Oculus virtual reality (VR) headset, to virtually visit Buckingham Palace during the celebration of Britain's Queen Elizabeth's Platinum Jubilee, in Nyeri, Kenya. Taken 6.2.2022

Meta Platforms Inc. signed an agreement to have chip-maker Qualcomm Inc. produce custom chipsets for its Quest virtual reality (VR) devices, the companies announced at a consumer electronics conference in Berlin on Friday.

"Unlike mobile phones, building VR brings novel multidimensional challenges in spatial computing, cost and form factor," Meta Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg said in a video message.

"We are still in the early stages of the metaverse and this sort of deep technical integration will help VR move towards being a multifunctional computing platform," he said.

Engineering and product teams of both companies will work together to produce the chips, powered by Qualcomm's Snapdragon platforms, they said in a statement.

The chipsets produced through the collaboration will not be exclusive to Meta, but will be optimized specifically for Quest's system specifications, Meta spokesperson Tyler Yee told Reuters.

"There could be situations where we use off-the-shelf silicon or work with industry partners on customizations, while also exploring our own novel silicon solutions. There could also be scenarios where we use both partner and custom solutions in the same product," said Yee.

The agreement shows the dependency of Meta, known as Facebook until last year, on Qualcomm's technology even as it tries to develop custom silicon of its own for its virtual, augmented and mixed reality devices.

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