Meta Reuses Old RAM in New Servers with Custom Bridge Chip

Meta reuses old RAM in new servers with custom bridge chip

Facing soaring memory prices, Meta has engineered a custom Computer Express Link chip called Vistara to repurpose older RAM in its latest servers. This innovative approach allows the company to utilize surplus memory from decommissioned machines alongside native memory without significantly impacting performance, effectively solving a critical bottleneck for its AI infrastructure.

"The performance of about 40% of Meta’s millions of servers is limited by a lack of memory, the company said — but it has a surplus of older DIMMs from decommissioned servers, because RAM chips can last about twice as long as the rest of the machine."