Facebook just announced that it is going to open source its server and data center designs and has announced the formation of the Open Compute Project, an industry-wide initiative to share specifications and best practices for creating the most energy efficient and economical data centers. This could potentially mark the beginning of an era, akin to what open source software did for the software industry: Open Hardware.
Surely a great thing to happen in a world that is becoming increasing open, both technically and of course, socially. The Open Compute project is about making available the "hacks" that the Facebook Engineering team has worked on to efficiently power their data centers. This opening-up is with the intent to encourage innovation in the hardware design space, much like open source promotes innovation.
Watch the folks at Facebook Engineering in this short video speak about this, first hand.
Oh, and just one thing: don't expect hardware to become free anytime soon, like what's happened in the software industry. Till then, well, cloud computing may hold the promise for those who cannot do the engineering themselves!
Sunday, April 10, 2011
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