Zuck saves Meta bucks by reusing memory from old servers with a custom CXL ASIC
In production on millions of boxes and the payoff is a 25% reduction in machines needed for some inference workloads
Meta is recovering DDR4 memory from old servers, installing it in new machines, and using a custom Compute Express Link (CXL) ASIC to share the memory across applications – without encountering latency problems.
The social networking giant calls its tech "Vistara" and will present it at ISCA 2026 on Monday, but The Register found the company's paper ahead of the talk.
The document opens with the admission that Meta can't increase the amount of memory in around 40 percent of its vast server fleet, meaning millions of servers can't handle some of its workloads. That's unfortunate because the expected service life of its servers is three to five years, but memory is useful for seven to ten years.
Meta's response is to rip DDR4 DIMMs from old servers, put them...
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