Facebook does whatever it wants. It has the resources and the people. Right now, it is planning to make the computing platform that makes it successful to be available to everyone. Visit the OpenCompute platform which was launched this week.
From http://opencompute.org/
We started a project at Facebook a little over a year ago with a pretty big goal: to build one of the most efficient computing infrastructures at the lowest possible cost.
Register for Tekedia Mini-MBA edition 17 (June 9 – Sept 6, 2025) today for early bird discounts. Do annual for access to Blucera.com.
Tekedia AI in Business Masterclass opens registrations.
Join Tekedia Capital Syndicate and co-invest in great global startups.
Register to become a better CEO or Director with Tekedia CEO & Director Program.
We decided to honor our hacker roots and challenge convention by custom designing and building our software, servers and data centers from the ground up.
The result is a data center full of vanity free servers which is 38% more efficient and 24% less expensive to build and run than other state-of-the-art data centers1.
But we didn’t want to keep it all for ourselves. Instead, we decided to collaborate with the entire industry and create the Open Compute Project, to share these technologies as they evolve.
Energy Efficiency
As a result of the Open Compute Project, Facebook’s Oregon data center is now one of the most efficient in the world:
- Facebook’s energy consumption per unit of computing power has declined by 38%2.
- The new data center has a PUE of 1.073, well below the EPA-defined state-of-the-art industry average of 1.51. This means 93% of the energy from the grid makes it into every Open Compute server.
- We’ve removed centralized chillers, eliminated traditional inline UPS systems and removed a 480V to 208V transformation.
- Ethernet-powered LED lighting and passive cooling infrastructure reduce energy spent on running the facility.