Facebook Blows Up The Server Industry With New Open Source Hardware

It may seem a bit strange, but Facebook has some serious hardware chops these days. It started with the open hardware server designs, but this year the company is doing one better and unveiling a new standard server design that should allow for much more modular servers and racks.

First and foremost, Facebook designed a new universal processor slot, there hasn't been one in decades. The really surprising thing is that the industry is behind it, Intel, AMD and a couple of ARM processor makers are involved.

Technically, it's not a processor slot but a system-on-a-chip one, based on the PCI-E standard. This should enable companies to use any processor, from any vendor, with their motherboards. In fact, they can even mix and match them, put Intel processors alongside AMD ones, or, perhaps a better choice, alongside ARM-based ones.

Facebook has been working on this for a few years, but this is the biggest move yet. It even spun-off Open Compute as an independent non-profit which will continue working on interoperable standards and open hardware designs...