Why Facebook’s new “Area 404” hardware lab is where prototyping of solar drones, Internet-beaming lasers, VR headsets, and next-gen servers happens
Menlo Park august 4:This is where Facebook will prototype its solar drones, Internet-beaming lasers, VR headsets, and next-gen servers..So yesterday, Facebook gave a group of journalists the first look inside Area 404.
Packed with giant, expensive, dangerous machines like a computer-controlled 9-axis drill, Area 404 houses one of the few rooms at Facebook Mark Zuckerberg isn’t allowed in. It’s too unsafe despite all the precautions, certifications, and training Facebook offers its hardware engineers.
Luckily Facebook rigorously adheres to a 5S safety system — sort, set in order, shine, standardize and sustain. Every single tool is laid in a labeled square of tape. Spencer Burns, one of the lab’s CNC Model Maker, explains that Facebook can’t move fast if it can’t find its tools.
Jay Parikh, Facebook’s Head of Engineering and Infrastructure, tells me the 22,000 square foot space is named Area 404 after the “Not Found” error code. Facebook engineers kept needing to prototype new hardware devices, but the resources necessary were unfortunately “not found” at Facebook.
It’s a massive upgrade from where Facebook’s tinkering in the physical world started. “Our first hardware lab was a big as a desk in the old mail room” laughs Parikh.
His favorite piece of the new lab? An electron microscope with 10,000X magnification for inspecting teeny, tiny failures in hardware.
Parikh explains that there are two main objectives for Area 404:
- To create a collaboration space big enough to get hardware engineers from across the company together in person to work on shared problems
To build a state-of-the-art hardware laboratory with the equipment necessary to prototype and fail test the early designs of Facebook’s forthcoming gadgets
Both will cut down the time it takes Facebook to get from device conception to working prototype it can then mass produce.
The Internet.org Connectivity team that tests apps under weak connections, the Oculus VR squad, Facebook’s mysterious new Building 8 pioneer tech division, and its Infrastructure teams that build servers and data center can now bounce ideas off each other in a shared home. The lab has 50 work benches to accommodate them all.
What will be built here? Data infrastructure like Facebook’s open rack network switchWedge, its Open Vault storage solution, and the sensors for its Telecom Infra Project’sOpenCellular platform. Connectivity Lab inventions like the Terragraph wifi nodes andProject ARIES antenna, as well as parts for the Aquila solar-powered drone that just had its first successful test flight. Plus Oculus will prototype future version of the Rift headset and the Surround 360 camera.
But with Area 404, it can bring its creations in the physical world up to the same pace of creation and iteration that’s driven Facebook’s success in the software world.
