Intel to power Facebook

Facebook has teamed up with Intel to optimise its hardware and software as the company builds its data centre infrastructure.

Intel will now power Facebook's computing infrastructure. The social networking site has 90 million users.

It is expected that Facebook will deploy thousands of Intel Xeon processor-based servers over the next year to help scale rapid global expansion and meet the processing needs of the company's media applications that span videos, music and photos.

Intel will work to address Facebook's processing needs, deliver the most energy efficient processors and evaluate ways to harness the optimal performance from Facebook's servers.

"Intel has demonstrated that the performance of their systems can help Facebook scale our infrastructure and continue to deliver the best experience to users around the world," said vice president of technical operations at Facebook Jonathan Heiliger.

It's believed that the partnership may also benefit the Web 2.0 industry at-large. According to a statement released by Intel, the company "plans to work with Facebook to evaluate ways to improve its software performance on Intel-based servers".

The deal with Intel comes after Facebook tested and benchmarked a number of server platforms and scenarios before selecting the Intel Xeon processor 5400 series for its round of new deployments.