Facebook Will Open Source ‘Big Sur’ Servers

The Morning Download: Facebook Will Open Source ‘Big Sur’ Servers that Boost Power of Artificial Intelligence By Steve Rosenbush

Good morning. Facebook Inc. says it will open source new designs at the heart of its artificial intelligence efforts. It's just one of several companies that are sharing hardware and software for free, in an effort to attract developers and resources to their platforms. In theory, open sourcing technology such as Facebook's 'Big Sur' server should boost innovation and lower costs. MIT Technology Review reports that "Serkan Piantino, an engineering director in Facebook’s AI Research group, says the new servers are twice as fast as those Facebook used before. 'We will discover more things in machine learning and AI as a result' ,” he says. Facebook launched the Open Compute Project, which has been a leader in transferring the open source principles of the software industry to hardware. Alphabet Inc.'s Google also recently open sourced its TensorFlow AI technology, and is competing for the attention of the small community of deep learning experts, Wired says. It will be up to! companies to figure out whether and how they make use of powerful open source technology moving into the market. Those skills aren't free.