Meta mentioned Tuesday it’s partnering with Arm to develop a brand new class of CPUs designed to help rising AI workloads and general-purpose computing throughout its increasing information middle footprint.
The primary product, referred to as the Arm AGI CPU, is being positioned as a extra environment friendly various to legacy server processors for AI-optimized infrastructure.
Meta mentioned the chip is supposed to enhance efficiency per rack and help giant gigawatt-scale AI deployments, which the corporate sees as central to its push towards extra superior AI programs. The Arm AGI CPU will work alongside Meta’s customized MTIA silicon, including one other layer to the corporate’s broader effort to construct a diversified {hardware} stack for coaching and inference.
The announcement provides to Meta’s latest flurry of infrastructure offers. In February, Meta signed a long-term settlement with AMD for as much as 6 gigawatts of Intuition GPUs, and earlier this month Reuters reported that Meta laid out a roadmap for 4 new in-house AI chips because it scales its information facilities.
Reuters reported that the AGI CPU is Arm’s first main in-house information middle chip effort, marking a notable departure from its conventional mannequin of licensing designs to companions. Reuters additionally mentioned Meta is the lead design companion, that TSMC is manufacturing the chip on a 3-nanometer course of, and that quantity manufacturing is anticipated within the second half of 2026.
Arm mentioned the AGI CPU is constructed for the agentic AI period, the place CPUs are more and more liable for orchestrating accelerators, reminiscence, storage, networking, and enormous numbers of distributed AI duties. In its reference configuration, Arm says a regular air-cooled rack can maintain 30 blades and ship 8,160 cores, whereas a liquid-cooled design with Supermicro can scale to greater than 45,000 cores per rack.
Arm additionally claims the chip can ship greater than twice the efficiency per rack of present x86 programs and says that would translate into as a lot as $10 billion in capital expenditure financial savings per gigawatt of AI information middle capability.
Arm mentioned the AGI CPU can be out there to different prospects past Meta, with OpenAI, Cloudflare, SAP, SK Telecom, Cerebras, and others already named as launch companions. Meta additionally mentioned it plans to launch its board and rack designs for the CPU by way of the Open Compute Challenge later this 12 months, which might assist pace adoption throughout information middle builders.
As of Tuesday afternoon, Meta shares have been buying and selling round $595.20, down 1.5% on the day, whereas Arm shares have been close to $135.20, down 1.2% on the day.
Disclosure: This text was edited by Estefano Gomez. For extra info on how we create and overview content material, see our Editorial Coverage.
