MediaTek Partners With Meta To Develop Chips For AR Smart Glasses

During MediaTek's 2023 summit, MediaTek executive Vince Hu announced a new partnership with Meta that would allow it to develop smart glasses capable of augmented reality or mixed reality experiences. 9to5Google reports: As the current generation exists, the Ray-Ban Meta glasses feature a camera and microphone for sending and receiving messages. However, the next generation of Meta smart glasses are likely to have a built-in "viewfinder" display to merge the virtual and physical worlds, allowing users to scan QR codes, read messages, and more. Beyond that, the company wants to bring AR glasses into the fold, which presents a much broader set of challenges. To accomplish this, a few things need to change. AR glasses need to be built for everyday use and optimized to take on an industrial design that looks good but can pack enough tech to ensure a good experience. As it stands, mixed-reality headsets are bulky and take on a large profile. Ideally, Meta's fully AR glasses would be thinner and sleeker.

The new partnership between companies means that MediaTek will help co-develop custom silicon with Meta, built specifically for AR use cases and the glasses. MediaTek brings expertise in developing low-power, high-performance SoCs that can fit within small parameters, like in the frame in a pair of AR glasses. Little to no details were revealed about the upcoming AR glasses, other than directly stating that "MediaTek-powered AR glasses from Meta" would be a thing sometime in the future. Previous leaks position the next generation of smart glasses with a viewfinder as a 2025 release, while a more robust set of AR glasses was referred to as a 2027 product -- if done properly, it would be an incredible product.

I don't get it

[locater16]

Mediatek makes SOCs. The thing which packages CPU and GPU and etc. together, most often for phones. They appear to be just fine at that. But they don't make the CPU, they don't make the GPU, they don't make almost any of the actual critical components for any of this. I'd ask why Meta would choose a middle of the road middleman to develop anything for VR, but it's Meta and they spent thirty billion dollars making Wii Sports for VR and forgot to add legs, so I don't need to ask.

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[tlhIngan]

They do have experience making SoCs and combining them together. They also have experience creating the BSP code needed to run on those SoCs.

Modern SoCs are complex devices with many power states and special boot ROMs that verify the software they boot. Facebook may not have experience in the area and farming it out is one way to do it.

MediaTek also has the expertise to bring it all the way to fruition - you know, after integrating all the bits together, they can send to TSMC and have it fabbed and then bri

Smartglasses again?!

[VeryFluffyBunny]

Yeah, we've already established that we really, really don't like them. They're creepy & make everyone around a wearer uncomfortable. Here's a long read on why: https://www.scientificamerican... [scientificamerican.com] I guess it's a useful gadget if you want to make compilation videos of people telling you to f**k off.

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[narcc]

It depends on the application. I have a pair that I use as a substitute for a multi-monitor setup when traveling. The viewing angle is on the narrow side, but that doesn't matter much as with 3dof moving between displays is so natural that I hardly notice. Besides, a narrow angle is a small price to pay for a sharp display and a headset that looks like a pair of sunglasses.

They're not the most comfortable things, but they're fine for getting work done on a flight or anywhere that you can't spread out.

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[berferdiam]

I remember when people talking on the phone using earbuds in public was creepy, still is actually.

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[VeryFluffyBunny]

I just thought that the rates of over schizophrenia had dramatically in public or that thousands of patients had be released from care facilities into "care in the community." But Google Glass & the like is a different, more intrusive, more pernicious kind of creepy. It's essentially sticking a video camera in the face of everyone you meet.

Link wrong?

[berferdiam]

Is the link messed up, or is it my browser? I get https://arstechnica.com/inform... [arstechnica.com]