Facebook VP Slams Intel, AMD Server Chips

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jhansonxi

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Maybe Google should get into the server business. I could see their name on the side of shipping containers full of super-efficient servers.
 

Hanin33

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that's the price these guys pay for trying to use comoddity parts in place of mainframes and true iron... do they really expect large scale energy efficiency with a surplus of computational power from a system that could easily be bought by a consumer? who's really the deluded one here?
 

mcnuggetofdeath

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Facebook has had issues with outages since before Nehalem launched. The guy is just trying to cover his own ass, and thats not cool. They shouldve dumped more money into infrastructure, rather than redesigning something that already works or lining your own pockets with the craploads of ad revenue they generate. And to use someone elses assesment of how a processor performs within a given situation, and expect it to scale indefinitely is a sign of his incompetency. I hope he gets fired.
 

curnel_D

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"lining your own pockets with the craploads of ad revenue they generate"

I could have sworn that's what they're in the buisness to do.

Facebook doesnt owe us anything.
 

paranoidmage

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I think an executive like him should know better than anyone that AMD and Intel are trying to sell a product and only showing benchmarks that make them look good. Not only that, but they are only benchmarks and not true indicators of performance. If he is truly as stupid as he makes himself out to be, Facebook should think about replacing him.

"The performance gains they're touting in the press, we're not seeing in our applications"

Maybe he should try optimizing his applications for the microarcitecture instead of expecting the microarchitecture be designed to fit his needs perfectly.
 

caqde

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Maybe he should try optimizing his applications for the microarcitecture instead of expecting the microarchitecture be designed to fit his needs perfectly.

Yeah that would likely be the issue. Todays server processors have many cores, if you want your server application to get a speed boost it is time you talk to your engineers working on facebook to start optimizing facebook for many processors. Of course they need to make sure any API's and server software they use is multi-core friendly too. Maybe they can start laying the blame somewhere else.
 

Gutbop

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The guy talks about how AMD and Intel processors aren't giving him the performance he wants, but then talks about how Google designs and builds servers that are efficient??

Did I miss something? Google doesn't build their own processors. They still use Intel or AMD (or IBM) processors. They just design and put together the server.

Maybe what he really means to complain about is that his people don't design their servers well enough, and he wants Google's people to design his servers instead.
 

rbarone69

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They should really find some good engineers to figure out where their bottlenecks are. I'll bet the system has so much scope creep they have no clue where the performance problems are and this VP is just spewing crap some ignorant director / admin / programmer gave him to excuse the problems.

The new Nehalem Xeon's are configured for dual processor sytsems and are 4 cores at the moment (I think). Soon there will be 16 thread executions per processor (8 cores, 8 HT). If programmers know how to use them they are VERY VERY fast. With cutting edge systems you make due with what you have and plopping core i7's in server environments could be a bad choice.

I'm sure this guy is simply ignorant (not his fault, I blame his staff and hiring). Go buy some low power xeons, restructure slow parts of your code, and stop whining!

 
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Could their developers be to blame? SRSLY, AMD and Intel have both been delivering the hotness lately... Hyperthreading is a complete gimmick and utter shite, but Nehalem and Shanghai are both still quite robust...
 
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They better go with an IBM server if they want to keep up with updating statuses and applications for every person on the planet!
 

nachowarrior

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First of all to be power efficient the software running on the processors needs to be optimized. If software these days wasn't so bloated we could run a lot more on a single server. Secondly, if configured properly you can get quite the bang for your buck (power and money). I think there's more likely an issue on Facebooks part rather than on the hardware level. He's just ticked off because google patented the idea to put ups' on a per/board basis.
 

the last resort

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they need to reoptimize their code to take advantage of the processors. Sorry, but a single threaded game will be improved going to a quad core. The game will still only use 1 CORE. You got that VP?
 

battery

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"The performance gains they're touting in the press, we're not seeing in our applications"
I'd also like to point out when a company, for example, says something is up to 50% more efficient, they mean it's up to 50% more efficient.
Just because facebook code written by a highschool grad doesnt fully utilize an architecture doesnt mean the performance isnt there.
 
Yeah, because facebook is more demanding than crysis or any other application, it keeps dropping frames because social networking is SO computing intensive. Does anyone remember the old Hustler magazine a@$hole of the month? Not that I've ever read that filth...

Someone needs to explain to this jerkoff that facebook is on its way out, its 15 minutes is up.
 

randomizer

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[citation][nom]fucktardd[/nom]facebook is fail, and when google wave rolls out.... well, lets just say they wont have to have much server space.[/citation]
The fact that Google's applications are taking over every market doesn't concern you? Everyone goes on about Microsoft's monopoly but Google will soon have their hand in everything, including your kitchen sink (they've already done it with your toilet, if you remember the April fools joke from a few years ago).

[citation][nom]buzznut[/nom]Yeah, because facebook is more demanding than crysis or any other application, it keeps dropping frames because social networking is SO computing intensive.[/citation]
You clearly don't have a clue what you're talking about. I guess Google's search engine isn't as demanding as Crysis either? Go and see if your puny desktop can handle thousands of requests per second and tell us if Crysis is still demanding.
 
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facebook can go fuck themselves... they are puny compared to amd and intel, they don't know how bloody hard is it to actually design a bloody processor.. yet alone make it efficient.. I see you in hell johnathan!!
 
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