Intel Grabs Facebook Hardware Contract

Following an agreement with Facebook, Intel has signed a contract to supply thousands of Xeon 5400 chips and software tools.

There are some happy facets at Intel. The company has landed a big deal with social networking site Facebook to power its infrastructure. That means literally thousands of new Xeon 5400 chips to handle the increasing database.

Intel will also supply software tools, including Vtune, and a team of coding experts in a move that it hopes will give it a favourable position in the Web 2.0 market.

Interestingly, both companies have agreed to work in open source, and Facebook has big plans for the new servers to run music and video services, too.

Facebook vice president of technical operations Jonathan Heiliger said:

"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."