{"id":2445,"date":"2016-12-21T20:23:22","date_gmt":"2016-12-21T20:23:22","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.rsoftsolution.com\/blog\/facebooks-secretive-hardware-team-signs-rapid-collaboration-deal-with-17-universities.html"},"modified":"2016-12-21T20:23:22","modified_gmt":"2016-12-21T20:23:22","slug":"facebooks-secretive-hardware-team-signs-rapid-collaboration-deal-with-17-universities","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rbsitsoftwaresolution.in\/blog\/facebooks-secretive-hardware-team-signs-rapid-collaboration-deal-with-17-universities.html","title":{"rendered":"Facebook\u2019s secretive hardware team signs rapid collaboration deal with 17 universities"},"content":{"rendered":"


\n<\/p>\n

Facebook\u2019s shadowy Building 8 research team needs help from academia to invent futuristic hardware. But today\u2019s pace of innovation doesn\u2019t allow for the standard 9-12 month turnaround time it takes universities to strike one-off research partnerships with private companies.<\/p>\n

Enter SARA, aka Facebook\u2019s \u201cSponsored Academic Research Agreement\u201d. It\u2019s a deal forged by <\/a>Building 8 head Regina Dugan<\/a> with 17 top universities to get collaboration on new projects started in just weeks or even days. SARA eliminates the need for time-consuming further negotiation and faculty approvals.<\/p>\n

In return for their labor, the universities will be paid a fee by Facebook. They\u2019ll also gain a focus for their research that will actually become a reality rather than staying theoretical.<\/p>\n

\"Facebook<\/p>\n

Facebook has its own hardware development facility in its Menlo Park campus\u2019 Area 404<\/p>\n

Dugan tells TechCrunch \u201cWith the SARA, B8\/Facebook has created a universal agreement with terms that are project-by-project and designed to be fair and appropriate for universities. All university partners sign the same agreement, allowing Facebook to build the relationships quickly, and at scale.\u201d<\/p>\n

The full list of universities on board is: Stanford, MIT, Harvard University, Caltech, Johns Hopkins University, Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory, Rice, UC San Francisco, UC Berkeley, Northeastern, Princeton, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Arizona State University, Texas AM, Georgia Tech and Virginia Tech, plus Canada\u2019s\u00a0University of Waterloo.<\/p>\n

\"roadmap_final\"<\/p>\n

Facebook\u2019s 10-Year Roadmap includes advanced hardware development accelerated by Building 8 and SARA<\/p>\n

Facebook refused to say what these schools will help it work on. But some of the company\u2019s advanced hardware projects include the\u00a0Terragraph wifi nodes<\/a>,\u00a0Project ARIES antenna<\/a>,\u00a0Aquila solar-powered drone<\/a>, and its own connectivity-beaming satellite from its Internet access initiative. There\u2019s also\u00a0Oculus\u2019 wired and mobile VR headsets<\/a>, and the Surround 360 camera<\/a>. And in backend infrastructure, it\u2019s building an open rack network switch called\u00a0Wedge<\/a>, the\u00a0Open Vault<\/a> storage solution, and sensors for the Telecom Infra Project\u2019s OpenCellular platform<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\"Facebook's<\/p>\n

Facebook\u2019s head of Building 8 and SARA, Regina Dugan<\/p>\n

Dugan has plenty of experience partnering with universities. She was the Director of DARPA \u2014 the government\u2019s\u00a0Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency \u2014 which worked with academic institutions to meet its aggressive timelines for shipping new tech to the US military.<\/p>\n

She was also the head of Google\u2019s\u00a0Advanced Technology and Projects group before joining Facebook in April to create Building 8. She says that speeding up product development is why she assembled a team that\u2019s shipped over 1.7 billion consumer hardware devices while at other companies, and now writes that \u201cit\u2019s why we seek partnerships with the best research minds in the world.\u201d<\/p>\n

Previously, Facebook has collaborated with universities by providing them with state-of-the-art servers so they can help it\u00a0investigate artificial intelligence<\/a>. It\u2019s already working with over 100 universities on research collaborations<\/a>, and provides fellowships.<\/p>\n

Facebook is trying to play catch up to companies like Google with a longer history of hardware manufacturing. That\u2019s why Facebook unified many of its hardware and research divisions like Building 8 in the Area 404 laboratory<\/a> of its Menlo Park campus. With Facebook\u2019s reach, resources, and now its expanded access to talent, it could quickly build devices that advance humanity\u2019s drive to connect.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Article source: http:\/\/feedproxy.google.com\/~r\/techcrunch\/social\/~3\/oKq4dFF9Ukw\/<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Facebook\u2019s shadowy Building 8 research team needs help from academia to invent futuristic hardware. But today\u2019s pace of innovation doesn\u2019t allow for the standard 9-12 month turnaround time it takes <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[3],"tags":[10,7,14,15,6,12,11],"class_list":["post-2445","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-latest-update","tag-computer-news","tag-downloads","tag-microsoft-download-news","tag-networking-updates","tag-technology-update","tag-wordpress-plugin-download","tag-wordpress-theme-download"],"aioseo_notices":[],"aioseo_head":"\n\t\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t