Facebook Partnerships Intel for Xeon-Based Server Deployments

Intel and Facebook inked a partnership agreement for the optimization of Facebook's hardware and software for the datacenter infrastructure the company is currently building. Facebook's increasingly rich media applications including videos, music, photos and more impose leveraging the processing power of the company. Over the next year, Facebook should be deploying "thousands of Intel Xeon processor-based servers" to keep up with its growing popularity and its fast global expansion.

The agreement signed by Intel and Facebook stresses on technology evaluation, benchmarking and optimization of software for Intel architecture, expected to maximize the benefit from this infrastructure investment. Intel's part will be taking care of the processing needs of the company, evaluating different chipset and platform configurations, as well as providing the most power efficient CPUs and delivering software engineering to find ways of optimizing the performance of Facebook's servers.

"We are pleased to expand our relationship with Intel," said Jonathan Heiliger, vice president of Technical Operations at Facebook. "Intel has demonstrated that the performance of their systems can help Facebook scale our infrastructure and continue to deliver the best experience to users around the world."

"Intel is excited to engage with Facebook as they are a dynamic force in the evolution of the Internet," said Kirk Skaugen, vice president and general manager of Intel's Server Platforms Group. "Facebook's selection of Intel Xeon processors for their next round of infrastructure growth is a testament to the performance, energy efficiency and technology benefits Intel can provide."

Facebook chose Intel's Xeon processor 5400 series for the new line of server deployments after going through an entire process of testing and benchmarking a number of server platforms and scenarios. The new servers will be installed starting with July.

"When you are responsible for providing a fast, high-quality experience to more than 90 million people worldwide, every ounce of efficiency matters," Heiliger said. "Intel's Xeon processors play a critical role in achieving our infrastructure efficiency."

Both companies are confident that the entire Web 2.0 industry will benefit from this collaboration. Intel's plans also include finding new ways to improve its software performance on company's-based servers. Intel's experience in the software engineering field is a sound one, at which we may add tools like Intel VTune and Intel Thread Checker, designed to help companies enhance the performance of their application on multi-core Intel processors. Most of Facebook's applications are built on open source, and the belief is that the results of the partnership are likely to return to the open source community, which will allow companies using similar technologies to fully take advantage of them.