Open source software and hardware is central to Facebook’s future | #OCPSummit2015

Open sourcing hardware and software is core to [Facebook, Inc.s] mission, according to Matt Corddry, Director of Hardware Engineering at Facebook. In a live interview with theCUBE co-hosts John Furrier and Jeff Kelly during OCP Summit 2015, Corddry explained that the benefit to the internet behemoth, he explained, is that it actually helps us move faster. By open sourcing hardware, Corddry added, Facebook intends to connect more folks, and get more smart minds on the problem.

Part of Facebooks recent software innovations blur the boundaries of open hardware and open software, Corddry said. He called out FBOSS and Open VMC as particularly exciting products software products that Facebook is announcing at a hardware summit precisely because they bridge hardware and software.FBOSS allows you to program you won network switches, enabling folks to hack [their] own software on [their] own network switch. Open VMC, he said, allows you to roll your own code in the little baseboard management controller Both these innovations are uncharted territory, he explained, because they enable people to hack and innovate down at the hardware platform management level.

While Facebooks announcements at the Open Compute Project Summit leverage bridge hardware and software, the company also has invested in innovating in both areas separately.

Recent software innovations, like the HipHop Virtual Machine, are designed to make it easier for Facebook to connect the world. The HipHop Virtual Machine allows people to scale out large web properties thanks to much more efficient PHP execution.

Corddry also highlighted the System on a Chip design that Facebook recently announced. A lot of it is the disaggregation of our infrastructure, he said, adding: Instead of cramming all bits and resources into one big boxwere going to really focus on solving one problem at a time. The intention, Corddry explained is to scale out massive amounts of compute without needing to put a bunch of local storage and other resources in the box at the same time.

Hardware-based innovations are in Corddrys wheelhouse. My team, he explained, mostly focuses on the gear in the data center. Contrary to popular trends, Facebook is building big, ugly tin boxes instead of going smaller, smaller, smaller servers. The benefit of theses servers, said Corddry, is that theyre super efficient, and built to work at massive scale. In particular, Corddry highlighted that the amount of power required to cool one of their designs is only three to six watts, whereas traditional OEM designs take 80 watts of power. That efficiency, he commented, makes a tremendous difference.

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Open source software and hardware is central to Facebook’s future | #OCPSummit2015