Facebook plans to launch mobile phone chips in data center

Beijing Time July 6 news, according to foreign media reports, social network Facebook announced plans to use the so-called "mobile chip" in its future data centers, the result of a stone stirred the waves, people began to talk. Frank Frankovsky, vice president of infrastructure for Facebook, said the social network plans to test such chips Frankowski and next year, in 2014.

"We're testing these chips and we have confidence in them," he said. According to the early test results, the Unit Cost unit power of the work will be improved, of course, depending on the workload. "Although Hiphop is the most CPU resource, it will not be excluded," Frankowski said. "Hiphop is an Open-source program that Facebook uses to speed up the entire site's PHP source code.

But the question that Frankowski is unable or unwilling to answer is the company's "mobile chip" that Facebook may take, considering the huge infrastructure of Facebook and the impact it may have on participating companies in Open Compute project This is an extremely important issue.

Frankowski is very clear about the concept of "mobile phone chip". It doesn't have to be arm chips with similar phone architectures. Intel's Atom Chip still has hope of winning. However, he pointed out that the graphics processor was not in his mind because they were meaningless to his workload. As for whether Facebook will reserve 64-bit chips, Frankowski. However, he said Facebook was "not going to use a 64-bit chip".

As for the timing of the chip launch, he said the chips are still being tested and some chips will be used in the second half of 2013. "If this goes well, Facebook's use of a mobile phone chip will have a big impact on the market," Frankowski added. "Which companies can take this opportunity to stand out?" Let's look at these potential winners:

Calxeda Ltd.

The start-up company in Austin, Texas, hired Frankowski as a consultant, but its products--combined with a variety of arm cores and a dedicated network chip--were just offline. Moreover, it needs to wait until 2013 or 2014 years to allow its system to support 64-bit chipsets. This is precisely within the Frankowski time frame, and Frankowski's reference to the workload problem is precisely what Calxeda is working on to test and establish standards.

Marvell/Dell

The Marvell Technology Group has also used the arm kernel in its Armada series, and Dell has started testing the server production line with such chips. In May this year, Dell announced the production line. The company is Facebook's large hardware vendor and participant in Open Compute Project, the social network's full open source program. Moreover, Frankowski was a former employee of the Dell DCs (Data Center solution) Department, which has purchased a lot of hardware from the department.

Intel

Frankowski very clearly that Intel's atom chip is within his purview. While many may be dismissive, Intel is doing a great job of reducing the energy consumption of x86 atom series chips. The company also launched its Centerton chip this month, which will run on HP's Low-energy servers. The new system can do the work of the traditional 150-watt system under the power of 12-14 Watts. Moreover, Intel has begun to tailor the 64-bit atom chip to the Low-power server vendor, Seamicro (now being acquired by AMD). Intel has established partnerships with Facebook and has a dominant x86 architecture and 64-bit chips.

AMD

It is difficult to assess the company because it has little experience with "cell phone chips" until the company acquired Seamicro in March this year. Until now, it has not had much experience. But the acquisition seamicro--the company's use of Intel's atom chip-allowing it to enter the market. In addition, when the author showed these competitors to Frankowski, he told me: "I will not let amd out of the game." ”

Tilera Ltd.

Since 2004, the start-up company in Cambridge, Massachusetts, has developed multi-core chips for large data and cloud workloads. Tilera, the company's server Solutions Manager, Ihab salad (Ihab Bishara), says the company's advantage is that it has more than 10,000 cores running in its customers ' products. The kernel has been used in the 32-bit version of Facebook and has been well received by the social network.

Some cynics claim that Facebook is trying to push "phone chips" into the data center just to keep Intel vigilant. However, Tilera has launched its first 64-bit server for the x86 architecture in the marketplace. And, of the top 20 U.S. websites, three sites have deployed such servers.

(Editor: Lu Guang)