[HH] open compute project
Tom Metro
tmetro+hhacking at gmail.com
Sun Feb 2 02:25:36 EST 2014
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
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