Facebook and Intel announced today that they would work together to optimize Facebook's hardware and software as the company builds out its datacenter infrastructure. Facebook plans to deploy thousands of Intel Xeon processor-based servers over the next year to help scale rapid global expansion and meet processing needs of the company's increasingly rich media applications that span videos, music, photos and more.

To maximize the return on this infrastructure investment, Facebook and Intel have signed a collaboration agreement that focuses on technology evaluation, benchmarking and optimization of software for Intel architecture. Intel will work to address Facebook's processing needs through assessment of various chipset and server platform configurations, delivery of the most energy efficient processors and allocation of software engineering to evaluate ways to harness the optimal performance from Facebook's servers.

Facebook said that it has been testing and benchmarking a number of server platforms and scenarios, and ultimately selected the Intel Xeon processor 5400 series for its round of new deployments that begin in July.