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Facebook Goes DRAM
Facebook has come up with a data cache which runs on flash memory instead of DRAM. Dubbed McDipper it saves money while still delivering higher performance than disk.
The system is a Facebook-built implementation of the popular memcached key-value store the only difference is that runs on flash memory rather than pricier DRAM. Memcached is the open-source key-value store that caches frequently accessed data in memory so applications can access and serve it faster than if it were stored on hard disks.
Facebook runs thousands of memcached servers to power its various applications. The only downside is that it is expensive. McDipper can handle working sets that had very large footprints but moderate to low request rates. It provides up to 20 times the capacity per server and still supports tens of thousands of operations per second.
According to Gigaom, Facebook has deployed McDipper for a handful of these workloads. This has reduced the total number of deployed servers in some pools by as much as 90 per cent while still delivering more than 90 per cent of get responses with sub-millisecond latencies.
Will Facebook Go Lower?
September 6, 2012 by admin
Filed under Around The Net
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Facebook is still overvalued and analysts are starting to agree with us that the company could fall to about $13 a share.
SmartMoney’s Jack Hough is being quoted by Forbes as saying that Facebook should be worth about half what is now – about $29.52 billion, or just a tad over $13 per share. Hough compares Facebook to Google which trades at 3.6 times its projected revenues for 2014. Analysts expect Facebook to have $8.2 billion in sales that year which means you just multiply this figure by about three.
All makes sense and is a similar view to what I said when Facebook issued its daft IPO and people lost their shirts and underpants on the deal. Part of the problem is still that Facebook has not worked out a good way to make money from advertising and it has not got an effective mobile strategy.
Maryland Bill To Ban Employers From Facebook Snooping
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The practice of employers requesting job applicants to provide their account login information for Facebook and other social media sites will soon be a think of the past, as Maryland is poised to be among the first states to ban the practice. The state’s General Assembly has passed the bill, which now awaits the signature of Gov. Martin O’Malley, reports The Baltimore Sun.
O’Malley is expected to sign the bill into law, reports The Gazette.
Melissa Goemann, who directs the American Civil Liberties Union’s legislative efforts in Maryland, tells the Sun, “this is a really positive development, because the technology for social media is expanding every year, and we think this sets a really good precedent for limiting how much your privacy can be exposed when you use these mediums.”
Goemann says the ACLU took up the case of Maryland Corrections Officer Robert Collins, who had been asked to give his Facebook login and password to Corrections officials during a recertification interview.
As news spread of similar cases, legislators at the state and federal level vowed to take action and ban the practice, on the grounds that it is an unreasonable invasion of a job-seeker’s privacy. Sens. Chuck Schumer and Richard Blumenthal say they asked the U.S. Justice Department to investigate whether the practice is illegal.
Bill Had A Hand In Microsoft Buying Skype
One of the world’s richest people, Bill Gates had given his blessing for Microsoft to buy Skype for $8.5 billion dollars. Actually, Bill Gates pressed other executives on the board of directors to support or back the idea of gobbling Sky which has yet to turn a profit.
Word on the street is that Bill told the Gates BBC in an interview which will be televised this weekend that he played an instrumental role in getting this deal approved by the board of directors. So this really squashes any rumors that Steve Ballmer was the force behind the deal getting approved by the executive team.