Facebook has launched the Open Compute Project, an initiative to share the custom-engineered technology in its data centre in Prineville, Oregon.
The new Open Compute Project is aimed to transform the energy efficiency of global data centres.
Facebook said that the advanced technology delivered a 38% increase in energy efficiency at 24% lower costs for the company.
In addition, the technology enabled the data centre to achieve initial power usage effectiveness (PUE) ratio of 1.07, compared with 1.5 for the company’s existing facilities.
Facebook said that it will release the designs as open hardware, to encourage industry-wide collaboration around best practices for data centre and server technology.
Advanced Micro Devices, Dell, HP and Intel are among the companies that co-developed technology with Facebook.
Further, Dell’s Data Centre Solutions business will design and build servers based on the Open Compute Project specification while Synnex will serve as a vendor for Open Compute Project servers, offering fully integrated and tested offerings based on customers’ specifications.
Facebook technical operations vice-president Jonathan Heiliger said the company and its development partners have invested tens of millions of dollars over the past two years to build upon industry specifications to create the most efficient computing infrastructure possible.
"Today we’re launching the Open Compute Project, a user-led forum, to share our designs and collaborate with anyone interested in highly efficient server and data centre designs. We think it’s time to demystify the biggest capital expense of an online business — the infrastructure."
