At Facebook, we build systems that allow billions of people all over the world to connect and communicate using whatever devices they have available. Our researchers and engineers are constant innovators as they design and build next generation, scalable, fast, reliable, and efficient systems. Moreover, fast evolving social apps and highly dynamic social workloads present many unique research opportunities. Learn more about our papers, workshops/panels, AMA, and other activities at PLDI: http://research.fb.com/pldi-2021

Below are some examples of how we are working to build community through open-source technology.

Python

Facebook and Instagram have been big supporters of the Python language. Here are a couple of highlights of our sponsored development of PyTorch. PyTorch FX consists of three main components: a symbolic tracer, an intermediate representation, and Python code generation. FX is a general framework that can be used for program transformations such as partitioning and placement, automatic quantization, performance optimization and compilation, and metaprogramming.

PyTorch Deploy provides a way to run eager PyTorch models in a production context consisting of a shared-memory multi-threaded C++ service. In order to run eager PyTorch models in this context, we needed a way to run multiple CPython interpreters without a shared global interpreter lock (GIL). With a GIL concurrent execution of Python code would not be possible and limit scaling. We bypass the GIL at the dynamic linker level by loading many copies of libpython into a single process. For early results, see: https://arxiv.org/pdf/2104.00254.pdf.

At Instagram we work to make Python run faster, focusing on topics such as fast interpretation, type checking, garbage collection, static analysis, machine code generation and register allocation. We recently open-sourced our internal performance-oriented Python runtime, Cinder. Check out our talk at PyCon US 2021.

Erlang

WhatsApp is working on several cutting-edge projects at scale to increase developer efficiency and help WhatsApp Erlang engineers ship more reliable, secure, and performant code. Starting in 2020, working closely with the open-source community, we have contributed improvements to the Erlang-LS (Language Server), including a fully functional step-based debugger integration, as well as improvements to the build system Rebar3. Some of our most impactful area of work include:

• Type Systems for Erlang at scale 
• OTP Debugger integration to Erlang-LS
• Tooling telemetry - usage, performance, reliability
• Performance and reliability improvements to the canarying process

We are also building an Erlang-only contract format to aid the developer in exploring, understanding and validating their code, and finding discrepancies between the Erlang client, server and contract. Moreover a new compiler to improve the experience of using Erlang in highly-interactive, IDE-focused use-cases. Check out WhatsApp GitHub to learn more.

Move

The Novi research team is developing Move: a safe and flexible programming language that was developed for smart contracts on the Diem blockchain, with potential applications in other blockchain and financial applications. We are continuing to invest in enhancements to the language, scaling performance, and advancing the state of the art in formal verification. We also have researchers working on cryptography and blockchain systems. Learn more at research.fb.com/category/blockchain-and-cryptoeconomics.