[HH] open compute project

[Tom Metro]

Some discussion of Facebook's open compute project:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GqnA3YIRSHs#t=1341

(that's at time offset 22:21. The time offset links work in Chrome, but
don't seem to in Firefox.)

which is Facebook's attempt to build an open and standardized hardware
platform.

Facebook says they saved $1.2B in the past 2 years as a result of this
approach to their server hardware.

Facebook estimates that less than 20% of the intellectual property comes
from Facebook now. (They thought they'd be the ones driving the
initiative for a long time.) They've had buy-in from Microsoft,
Rackspace, Fidelity, and lots of other major users of data center server
hardware.

These servers incorporate a "group hug" slot that lets you swap CPUs
from any vendor - AMD, Intel, ARM - onto a standard motherboard. (I
haven't investigated, but I'm guessing it is a PCB with a subset of
components, likely including RAM.)

The video clip had more details, and the written articles published last
week (such as in http://gigaom.com/) yet more.

It seems likely that the open compute project represents the largest
open hardware project, measured either in volume of units produced or
money spent.

 -Tom