Facebook FB +2.41% announced it is open sourcing a handful of infrastructure technologies at its annual “@Scale” conference in San Jose on Wednesday. The new tools, which improve compression and storage, will help the social media giant and other tech companies scale their user bases more quickly and with smaller storage needs, and help encourage open sourcing across the industry more broadly.
At @Scale, which is geared toward developers working on large-scale engineering problems at a range of companies, Facebook first announced it is open sourcing its Zstandard lossless compression algorithm called “v1.” Facebook said its tool is significantly faster and more efficient than standard compression technology. (For any viewers of HBO’s “Silicon Valley,” Zstandard is Facebook’s very own “Pied Piper.”) Technical as it may be, compression is important to tech companies like Facebook because it is used in nearly every computer and mobile device, and in many programs on those devices. Facebook said its new algorithm enables data processing to happen two to three times faster than standard algorithms, without compromising file quality, and can replace older technologies such as the “Deflate” compression algorithm. Facebook said it has already applied Zstandard to some of its storage and communications systems, including databases and backup systems.
“Open sourcing v1 of Zstandard is the first step toward realizing Zstandard’s potential for broad, industry impact,” Facebook said in a statement. “It is a game changer for small-packet data compression achieving 3-5x compression. Things that haven’t been able to be compressed before (think messages) now can be.”
Full article at http://www.forbes.com/sites/kathleenchaykowski/2016/08/31/facebook-open-sources-new-compression-and-storage-tools-debuts-360-video-stabilization/#69753a2c1c26
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