Facebook Slams Latest Chips From Intel And AMD

Intel and Advanced Micro Devices are good at rolling out new generations of computer chips each billed to outdo the performance and efficiency of the last.

But the gains of the latest round of multi-core chips may more marketing pitch than actual improvement.

“The performance gains they are touting in the press we’re not seeing,” Facebook Vice President Jonathan Heiliger said Thursday.

Heiliger, who runs Facebook’s giant data center with its massive computer farm of servers, said the company has been surprised by its observations.

The performance gains have been less than anticipated, he said at the Structure 09 conference in San Francisco.

He went on to say server vendors need to design servers with greater power efficiency from wall plug to central processor.

“I’m not sure why the hardware vendors have failed us,” he said.

The one company that has done a tremendous job creating energy-efficient servers is Google, he said.