TikTok’s owners ByteDance are about to make their own computer chips

ByteDance, the Chinese tech firm behind hit video-sharing platform TikTok, is reportedly planning on making their own processors and system-on-chips, joining a slew of other Chinese companies building their own silicon. This comes after ByteDance began posting a plethora of job openings on their website, all seeking hires related towards chip development, with them seeking at least 31 chip engineers.

This is unlikely to mean that ByteDance is becoming a major consumer CPU manufacturer like AMD or Intel though. Instead, it’s more likely that ByteDance is seeking to design its own silicon to fit its own specific needs and purposes. According to a spokesperson who spoke to CNBC, they haven’t been able to find suppliers that can meet their requirements, and so will instead make their own customised chips that can handle their workloads, which include their video platforms and entertainment apps. On top of that, the spokesperson added that they won’t be manufacturing chips with the purpose of selling them to other companies.

While they haven’t given much more in detail as to what these specific workloads are, an educated guess would be that ByteDance wants to build a chip to transcode videos uploaded by TikTok and Douyin users. ByteDance could also be looking at developing new codecs or AI-based software to improve video quality across their apps.

As for how they’ll do it, it’s likely that ByteDance are hiring these chip engineers to either design the system-on-chip, or perhaps work with a contract chip design company to come up with a system-on-chip that fits their needs. They will then need to hire a semiconductor manufacturer like TSMC or even Intel Foundry Services. However, judging from how ByteDance are still only in the process of hiring engineers, it seems as though they’re still a while away from that stage.

Once ByteDance does have their own chips though, they would become just the latest Chinese giant to have their own in-house custom silicon. Alibaba already has their own server processors built on the 5nm process that powers their data centers, while search engine company Baidu are already manufacturing their Kunlun AI processors for use in electric cars and cloud computing too. It can also be seen as just the latest part of the Chinese government’s plans to increase their self dependency in the silicon and semiconductor space; in 2019, authorities called for domestic alternatives to foreign-made computing hardware to become the new norm within China.

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