Facebook Launches Open Source Modular Switch, 6-Pack, To Run Networks In Data Centers

Facebook has announced that it has constructed a new hardware component which will run networks in its data centers in a way it wants to. The new homemade modular switch by Facebook, dubbed 6-pack, is able to bring together connections to lots of Facebook-built Wedge switches. In turn these switches connect to servers which are sitting in racks inside Facebook's server farms.

With this kind of facility, Facebook's popular apps and internal services are powered furthermore and they become more necessary in Facebook's operations. Facebook has optimised servers and storage hardware in its data centers. Facebook laid out an elaborate networking architecture a few months ago and the new modular switch completely fits into the architecture. This modular switch also poses challenge to other sellers like Cisco, Juniper and Arista. Just like Facebook's servers, 6-pack is also customisable.

In a blog post, Facebook engineer Yuval Bachar detailed about the new product, “Each element [in 6-pack] runs its own operating system on the local server and is completely independent, from the switching aspects to the low-level board control and cooling system...This means we can modify any part of the system with no system-level impact, software or hardware.”



In days to come, other companies are also expected to build or purchase similar modular switches for their data centers. Facebook is supposed to submit the 6-pack design to the Open Compute Project (OCP). Bachar, who led the 6-pack project, wrote further, “We will continue working with the OCP community to develop open network technologies that are more flexible, more scalable, and more efficient.” Presently the switch is being tested for further production at Facebook. 

10 Interesting Facts About Bill Gates

Most people know very few things about the computer wizard, Bill Gates. He is the second richest man in the world. Bill Gates co-founded one of the most successful tech companies in the world. There are many facts about Bill Gates that are unknown to the world. Today we have listed ten surprising things about Bill Gates that you probably didn’t know.

1. Bill Gates wrote his first computer program on a computer manufactured by General Electric when he was a teenager. He used the computer at lab in Lakeside Prep School. The first thing he built was a version of tic-tac-toe game, where you could play against the computer.

2. Bill’s school soon realized his passion for computer programming and they let him use school’s computer program for scheduling students in class. Bill altered the code to place himself in between interesting girls of class.

3. Bill Gates dropped out Harvard University to start Microsoft. He dropped out in 1975 to devote all his time to Microsoft’s growth and development.

4. Bill Gates was fond of fast driving. He loved to go on long drive in car. He was once arrested in New Mexico for driving without license. Police filed him for overspeeding and breaking the signal in 1977.

5. Gates used to take airline coach till 1997. He purchased his own airplane after that. He has named it as ‘big splurge’.

6. Bill Gates believes in charity. He has kept only $10 million each for his children. He says, “Leaving kids massive amounts of money is not a favor to them.” Bill Gates’s net worth is $81.1 billion.

7. The only regret that Bill Gates has is not knowing any foreign language. He says, it’s the biggest regret in his life so far. He always wanted to learn a foreign language.

8. Bill Gates has wrote a blog post that states what he would had done if Microsoft hadn’t worked out. Gates says that if Microsoft hadn’t worked out, he would have been a researcher for artificial intelligence. He has always been interested in that field.

9. Bill Gates is fond of music. He says Weezer is his favorite band. He also mentions U2 as his favorite. Gates is still waiting for Spinal tap to go back on tour.

10. Even though Bill Gates spends most of his time at his Foundation. He is still associated with Microsoft as personal agent. He keeps track of all the activities of the company and also guide the management team. 

Windows 10 Technical Preview For Phones Now Available

Microsoft has decided to make my job just a bit harder by naming all variants of Windows 10 clumsily, but if you have a phone that runs Windows Phone 8.1 and you want to try the next generation, ‘Windows 10 Technical Preview for phones” is now available to download for Windows Insiders, via the Windows Insider app.

Microsoft’s Insiders program is easy to sign up, requiring only your Microsoft account credentials and a willingness to play around with early software builds, which means bugs and crashes. The new version of Windows for smartphones more closely resembles its counterparts on Xbox One and the desktop, complete with customizable photo backdrops. Notifications now also sync between desktop and mobile, and there’s a much more sensible Settings menu that, even at first glance, seems to be a lot better put together than what Microsoft was offering before.

The biggest new feature for mobile devices might be that it now incorporates Skype chat in messaging and VoIP directly in the phone app, providing the basis for what could become Microsoft’s answer to iMessage in terms of offering a pervasive, system-level tool for communicating via text, voice and video no matter which device you happen to be using. Messaging in the preview build is missing dual-SIM support, search, drafts, voice note and ringtone sharing, as well as a number of other features. Cortana is also English-only in this build.

This is far from a complete picture of what Windows 10 will eventually become for phones, so don’t be surprised if a lot of the new features aren’t active yet. It’s also available initially for a smaller subset of the total range of devices that will get the full version when it gets its official consumer launch. You’ll need to have a Lumia 630, 635, 636, 638, 730 or 830 to participate, but future releases should include broader hardware support.

Here’s Why Your Windows Phone Might Not Be Able To Run Windows 10 — Yet

Windows 10 is out for Windows Phone devices. That’s wrong. Windows 10 is out in preview for Windows Phone devices. Wait, that’s wrong, too. One more try. Windows 10 is out in preview for a subset of Windows Phone devices that currently run Windows 8.1. There we go.

If you have a Lumia 630, 635, 636, 638, 730 or 830, and are running Windows 8.1, you can get the new code from Microsoft. If you, like me, are sitting with a charged Lumia 9xx device, you are probably wondering what you did wrong.

Microsoft promises that it will support more phone models with “each new build” of the code, so your time in the cold might be short. That said, Microsoft cites two technical reasons why the first crop of support phone SKUs is so constrained. First, a point on testing:

[F]or this technical preview, we need to start with a small subset of devices in order to isolate OS issues from hardware or board support package issues so we can stabilize the platform. This is a normal part of the engineering process, but you would not have seen it in the past because we haven’t done a public preview before[.]

That seems reasonable enough. But why pick a grip of lower-end phones, when the most die-hard Windows Phone fans likely have the faster, more expensive 9xx and 1xxx-series devices?

Some context on why we chose these and not higher end phones like the 930/Icon or 1520: We have a feature that will be coming soon called “partition stitching” which will allow us to adjust the OS partition dynamically to create room for the install process to be able to update the OS in-place. Until this comes in, we needed devices which were configured by mobile operators with sufficiently sized OS partitions to allow the in-place upgrade, and many of the bigger phones have very tight OS partitions.

Bad luck, compadre.

The enthusiast community will likely whine some at the exclusions, but provided that Microsoft can quickly roll out updates to the code and bring more devices into the fold, the whining should be short-lived.

Now the game is afoot: Microsoft is betting the soul of its principle platform on the idea that it can build a single operating system for devices of all sorts, screens of all sizes, and inputs of any variety. What you can’t say is that the vision is small.

Anyone want a Lumia 929?