Facebook says it will open the technical specifications of its new data center in a move to encourage industry-wide collaboration and innovation.

Teaming up with technology leaders including Intel and Dell, the online social networking giant on Thursday launched "Open Compute Project," an initiative to share the technology in its new data center in Prineville, Oregon.

The newly built data center produced a 38-percent increase in energy efficiency and cost 24 percent less to construct than its existing facilities.

"We think it's time to demystify the biggest capital expense of an online business -- the infrastructure," Jonathan Heiliger, vice president of technical operations at Facebook, said in a statement.

Facebook said it will publish technical specifications and mechanical CAD files about the center's servers, power supplies, server racks, battery backup systems and building design.

If a quarter of the data center capacity in the United States were built on Open Compute Project specifications, Facebook said, it would save enough energy to power more than 160,000 homes.

Inspired by the success of open source software, Facebook said it hopes open hardware will encourage industry-wide collaboration around best practices for data center and server technology.

Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook's CEO, said the company hoped to foster an ecosystem where developers could easily build startups.

Silicon Valley giants have been vying to build large new data centers to provide cloud computing resources, data-storage and software services to companies and consumers. That's while they usually keep key technical specifications confidential.