Like Google And Facebook, Twitter Designs Its Own Servers

[Guest]

Yes, Twitter offers a social network that delivers an endless stream of mini-messages, while Google offers, well, all sorts of online services, from an internet search engine to an online email service to a digital map of the earth. But in expanding its social network to more than 300 million people across the globe, juggling more than 500 million tweets a day, Twitter has rebuilt its foundational infrastructure in the image of Google, which runs atop a network of data centers that provide an unprecedented collection of computing power.

[shilparana]

For instance, Twitter recently fashioned a new type of machine for its AI system, which is based on “neural networks”—networks of machines that mimic the web of neurons in the human brain. These systems includes scads of graphics processing units, or GPUs, which are particularly adept at running neural nets.

[RobertWilliam]

According to Alex Roetter, Twitter’s head of engineering, the company now employs a team of hardware designers that customize computer servers for its data centers.