Meta has announced a collaborative effort with AMD over its mobile network-focused program known as project "Evenstar." No doubt a reference to Arwen's jewel of immortality in the Lord of the Rings movie series, and perhaps an attempt to spark longevity for the project.
Conceived back in February 2020 by Meta (when it was still Facebook) and Telecom Infra Project (TIP), project Evenstar marked the beginning of a revolution for mobile networking. One that could help to bring us faster and more widespread coverage.
Vodafone, Deutsche Telekom, Parallel Wireless and AceAxis are all companies involved in the Evenstar RRU program, but the project needed a little help from manufacturers to get going. The plans are coming along, and now Meta has added AMD to its shortlist of designated radio frequency (RF) equipment manufacturers.
Following AMD's $35 billion acquisition of semiconductor producer Xilinx in February of this year, the company was set to ease the graphics card crisis with a more efficient supply chain. All that seems to be on track, but Meta has since taken notice of AMD's RF chip, the Xilinx Zynq UltraScale+ RFSoC, which could help the company finally make the metaverse a reality.
Right now, as Meta's VP of connectivity Dan Rabinovitsj told CNBC recently, home and mobile networks aren’t quite ready for the metaverse yet. "If you really look at the pace of innovation in the telecom world, compared to other markets, it’s been harder to go faster in this space," he said. "One of the things that we’ve tried to change is that trajectory of innovation."
Working closely with AMD is sure to speed things along, and while our opinion of the metaverse is somewhat mixed, you can't deny that mobile gaming is becoming more and more prevalent. This is only going to benefit that movement, whether or not your Mom will look like a dope grabbing invisible cereal off unseen shelves when the big, metaphysical stores come around.
