How Facebook Is Eating the $140 Billion Hardware Market 89
mattydread23 writes: It started out as a controversial idea inside Facebook. In four short years, the Open Compute Project has turned the $141 billion data-center computer-hardware industry on its head. This is the comprehensive history of the project, including interviews with founder Jonathan Heiliger and members of the financial services industry who are already on board, plus a dismissal from Google's own data center guru Urs Holzle.
Summary plz (Score:1)
Yes but what IS "Open Compute Project".
Re:Summary plz (Score:5, Interesting)
Open source design of data center hardware - power, compute nodes, storage, rack and cable layouts. The problem is that everyone's needs are slightly different.
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The average person with a brain will realize that they are too stupid to trust with their own data. Only the elite 1% know what they are doing, the 99% just follow what they're told as "best practices" without realizing they're using the wrong best practices for the wrong thing because they don't understand the problem the best practice was meant to solve.
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Not sure if trolling or just oblivious. This isn't about 'cloud' -- this is about "maybe, if you're going to build a large datacenter, you can not re-invent the wheel and use standardized DC components, courtesy of a ton of research work FB did to optimize the BOM."
Re:Summary plz (Score:5, Funny)
236 points when playing buzzword scrabble?
Re:Summary plz (Score:5, Funny)
Given that this is Slashdot, I believe the appropriate reply to your question is "a Raspberry Pi Beowulf cluster, enclosed in a 3D-printed 1U rackmount unit with a cooling system controlled by an Arduino".
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Monitored by drones.
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And not employing enough females and minorities.
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I'd be all for that if it enforced a good ratio of cute catgirls.
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Do not worry. Someone will be along shortly to tell you that it is attitudes like your's that prevent women from applying to the tech jobs in the first place. Me? I understand the difference between something said in jest here and something said in a work environment. Though I may have now preempted the aggressive comment(s).
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it is attitudes like your's that prevent women from applying to the tech jobs in the first place.
No. What prevents women from applying to the tech jobs is the amount of self-directed continuous learning that is required to succeed in this field. If that continuous education could be crammed in a one-night-per-week community college program that women can bitch/brag about on Facebook or Twitter and that would result in a formal document to add to their record, they'd flock to IT.
Also they just don't like computers, because computers are too straightforward and don't react to emotional blackmail.
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Looking back, women weren't programmers, they were the computers [wikipedia.org].
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This.
If I had mod, I'd bump you +1, Informative.
It's really a fucked up situation where some brilliant women used their brains to figure shit out and some goddam man was pushed front and center to take the credit.
Humanity is retarded in development by a factor of the percent of women it has disrespected.
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All paid for in Bitcoin.
Congrats Mark Zuckerberg (Score:3)
I hear OCP is currently planning a move to Detroit to cut down on Silicon Valley overhead costs.
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I hear OCP is currently planning a move to Detroit
I know you are joking, but I know of at least one SV company that is planning on doing exactly that (I don't expect it to turn out well, but I'm watching).
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Re:Congrats Mark Zuckerberg (Score:5, Interesting)
I work in Detroit as an embedded software engineer (although, I've picked up some solid hardware skills in the last few years). I have just under 10 years experience and I make a CH under $100k. Auto industry pays me well. I have a job offer in SoCal which I am considering. I have a detailed spreadsheet, and after rent for a smaller place (I'd be selling a home to rent in CA) and taxes, I will have about the same amount of money. Given the cost of living out there, I will have less money after bills out there. It's a pretty hard sell financially. But, the beach is free! Ditto with hiking.
However, the problem with this job market, lucrative though it may be at the moment, is 2 fold: (1) A lot of the work is very boring. My skills are not growing at the pace they would in a faster paced business. And, boring is boring! (2) I have no idea what is going to happen to the American automakers. The industry is going to have one hell of a decade sooner rather than later. We have a business culture that's about 20 years out of date at least. My guess is we'll see even less vertical integration than we have now, and the traditional automakers will focus on what they do best: engines, materials, manufacturing, assembly, systems integration. I do not see a world where the automakers are going to catch up to the big boys with regards to electronics and software. They are just too far behind. We're already seeing Apple and Google invade the automotive electronics, which, IMO, is more of a vote of no confidence in the traditional auto industry's ability to make decent, useable consumer facing electronics. Engine controllers. We got that. Infotainment systems that don't make you want to drive off a bridge? Not so much. Sensors and automation? Maybe, but I don't see too much impressive at the deep technical level coming out of Detroit.
It gets murkier with algorithmic driving. There are some big boys that will fare just fine (like Bosch), but there are just too many small players moving too fast. Detroit has the skill set to integrate all that high technology, but we're losing a war of time with regards to creating cutting edge tech. People might argue that we're in a tech bubble, but the internet of things is not purely hot wind. Embedded is growing REALLY fast, and it's going to continue at a very nice clip. I think we'll see more market fragmentation for a little while before a reversal with cross market, embedded technology consolidation on a totally new scale. For consumers, that might be a good thing (probably a mixed blessing). For my career, it might hurt to stick with the losing side. There's a reason embedded companies aren't building tech centers here in Detroit where its cheaper and we have a massive technological workforce: our industry (and therefore our labor force) has a complacent culture compared to many other places in the country. If I were going to invest, I'd be much happier to train enthusiastic self starters than hire from an existing talent pool with a mediocre culture.
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I hope it improves there. I have ulterior motives but I have altruistic motives as well. The place, I have only been there once since the mid 1990s, has really fallen apart. The reason I went there was to finish a business deal that I have a small hope for. I bought eight adjoining lots and had the houses (they were uninhabitable and condemned) and had them razed. The cost was trivial compared to the potential reward if Detroit ever gets its feet back under it. So, yes, I have a financial interest in the im
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Very true but this was money that can sit idle for a long time. I do not need to worry about it.
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Trivial - make sure to get the properties re-appraised. I do not have the numbers to hand but the properties are all zoned residential. I believe the total is about $400 USD per plot and they are all pretty much the same size. Six make up a rectangle and two make up a panhandle effect.
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I should also add that if you improve the property (in my case the improvement was actually razing the properties) then they seem pretty decent about abating back taxes. I spent an additional 10k to get the properties razed and hauled off for disposal/recycling and the town abated all the back taxes. I had a lawyer/liar set it all up. As back taxes had already been paid they actually allowed the forward taxes to be negated until the sum reached zero and I had to start paying current taxes. The back taxes we
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Nope. I am way up in Maine. Hell, I am almost in Canada.
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I am quite diversified and spending fun money on a potential win is speculating but I prefer the term gambling. Another good one in is municipal bonds.
Re: Congrats Mark Zuckerberg (Score:2)
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When people say Detroit, they mean the Greater Metropolitan Detroit Area, Detroit proper has lost 25% of it's population, not dissimilar to places like Ethiopia, Darfur and Rowanda; where as you mean Detroit meaning the area including the new General Motors data center in Rochester Hills I'm seeing ads and job fairs for anything IT, Software Engineering, mechanical and or automotive engineering. There's lots of startups and high-tech 50 minutes down the road near Ann Arbor (where /. started BTW) and in bet
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So..nobody got the OCP joke?
OCP, the evil corp from the Robocop movies, headquartered in Detroit? Come on where is your geek cred, people?
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I would never joke about the Dark Carnival.
Not relevant? (Score:2)
When asked about OCP, Hölzle told us,"I think in the long term it’s less important because most people should not use their own racks even if it’s Open Compute ... It will be relevant only for the very, very large companies — for the Facebooks, the Ebays, the Microsofts."
But then, who among us needs computers anyway?
"I think there is a world market for maybe five computers."
Thomas Watson, president of IBM, 1943
Re:Not relevant? (Score:5, Insightful)
The guy in charge of selling data center computing as a service thinks that most companies should buy their data center computing from a company like his instead of rolling their own.
And this is surprising or controversial why?
In other news, the guy from Cisco thinks that companies will be looking to Cisco for fast, stable networking. And the guy from Intel thinks that companies will be looking to Intel for power efficient data center solutions.
This doesn't make them luddites.... it makes them salesmen.
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Cloud systems are just a phase before everyone is too damn worried about their data privacy and they in-house their data again. Everyone wants to use it, but it's not the right option for just about anything that involves customer data.
Do people not see the connection between increases in privacy breeches and the moves to cloud systems?
Re:Not relevant? (Score:5, Insightful)
Do people not see the connection between increases in privacy breeches and the moves to cloud systems?
The correlation is negative. Cloud companies have better security than a typical small company trying to roll their own solution.
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I don't disagree entirely.
Clouds are a huge attack surface populated by some impressive names.
Hell, the feds can't keep their doors shut.
I do the best I can with my law firm in-house and I use best of breed off the shelf protection.
That's my risk assessment.
I don't sell widgets and it's already in the news that Bubba got in a car wreck and stuff.
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Can an intrusion result in lost data that would violate your attorney-client privileges? If so are there legal repercussions for that? If the answer is yes, to either one, then you may want someone to take a look at it.
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I work in a large international law firm. A lot of our clients do not want their data in the cloud, even clients (major ones that we hear about daily) that offer cloud services. A portion of our clients do not mind data in the cloud but only if WE control the encryption keys and no one else does. Example, Office 365. We cannot hold the keys. Therefore we maintain Exchange email services in house. MS pricing is great and having Exchange in the cloud would be a huge benefit for us and a huge cost saving
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Good question.
We more than comply with reasonable request.
Similar circumstances apply to physical break-in.
Did we have locks? Were the windows sealed? Do we have physical intrusion detection, etc?
Is the phone room sealed? Are the servers and backup tapes and paper files in a secure area?
Your point is valid and the answer is "due diligence."
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Do people not see the connection between increases in privacy breeches and the moves to cloud systems?
The correlation is negative. Cloud companies have better security than a typical small company trying to roll their own solution.
True, for now. But as cloud providers consolidate (scale wins so there is only enough space for a few players), then the target increases. In the risk matrix, the likelihood may be low, the potential impact is through the roof.
If I was a terrorist I'd give up on hijacking planes and dirty bombs and focus on data centre destruction instead.
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Let me fix this for you "Cloud companies 'SHOULD' have better security than a typical small company trying to roll their own solution". Greed being the driver for the actual security provided. Cloud companies will provide the cheapest possible security they can get away with, typical small companies will provide the best security they can understand and afford.
So will cloud companies inevitably sell you company secrets to the highest bidder, inevitably, if not the first owner, then the second owner who p
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Cloud companies will provide the cheapest possible security they can get away with
Cloud companies have invested billions in data centers. They are not going to skimp on security, risk a big breach, and see all of that investment go down the drain along with their reputation. They have a very strong incentive to provide good security.
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That is exactly why lawyers and Public relations agencies. Because that is cheaper than paying the cost of actually supplying what companies claim to supply. It's like you're throw back to the 50s through to the 70s. That little lie has long been disintegrated, totally and utterly obliterated, after repeated scams from top (seriously dude what bank would lie to investors about crap investments 'er' all of them, what incumbent phone company would lie to customers about services 'er' all of them, what food p
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Do people not see the connection between increases in privacy breeches and the moves to cloud systems?
The correlation is negative. Cloud companies have better security than a typical small company trying to roll their own solution.
It's all mote, P@ssw0rd will get you into 50% of the cloud.
Re:Not relevant? (Score:4, Funny)
Do people not see the connection between increases in privacy breeches and the moves to cloud systems?
Well, I'm not wearing any pants.
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I think it's the other way around -- people are moving to the cloud because they see themselves as bigger targets and can't adequately protect their own systems compared to another company who spends billions hardening theirs. If the hackers can spend 2 seconds breaking into your system vs taking 2 years to penetrate Google's,
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"I think there is a world market for maybe five computers."
Thomas Watson, president of IBM, 1943
From wikipedia: Although Watson is well known for his alleged 1943 statement, "I think there is a world market for maybe five computers", there is scant evidence he made it. Author Kevin Maney tried to find the origin of the quote, but has been unable to locate any speeches or documents of Watson's that contain this, nor are the words present in any contemporary articles about IBM. The earliest known citation on the Internet is from 1986 on Usenet in the signature of a poster from Convex Computer Corporatio
IBM days (Score:1)
Back in my IBM days, all of our departments had budgets, performance metrics and standards - KLOCs.
When I went to work on the Olympics, we were under the marketing department's budget.
We need an AIS machine ASAP. They put it on a jet and flew it out to us overnight from Texas and we had it at 6AM. We asked for it at 8PM the previous night.
Do not underestimate the MarketingSide. In the MarketingSide, there is UNLIMITED POWER! UN..LIMIT..ED..POW..ERRRRRR!
Facebook is part of the DarkSide. The ability to get
1. FB wins. 2. Customers win (Score:1)
3. Brand name PC and server manufacturers are now on board.
4. ??
5. Profit!
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LTO - Linear Tape Open - has been a mega success in driving up cross manufacturer compatibility, and driving down the cost of tape backup. As a consequence, tape use has gone up. (Possibly assisted by increased amounts of data, and the fact that it is now obvious than not even NSA and GCHQ can keep their data secure "in the cloud").
LTO is made by players like HP, IBM, Sony.
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There have always been industry consortia standardizing this or that, such as VGA, Ethernet and VESA bus back in the PC's pre-internet days.
But this is different - it's an encompassing standard that basically says that if BrandX can claim that it followed OCP, their design is just as good as Lenovo, HP, or Dell. That is a big difference. Sure, quality control and service could be different, but is that worth paying a huge markup for? Maybe not, for many customers.
explain to me how this threatens cisco? (Score:1)
I see a ton of stuff about server hardware in that article but I don't see anything that explains how this will trounce cisco who is 90% networking hardware.
Re:explain to me how this threatens cisco? (Score:5, Informative)
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Note that a lot of companies are 'members' of various standards/open endeavors to have clout with clients. Sometimes to just get into conversations that they would have been left out of to practically talk people out of caring about the standards body, to slap the name on something of their own to get legitimacy without useful compliance, or to effectively sabotage the standard to further their goals.
This is a key reason why clients should carefully understand any standards body ('open' or not) and be *par
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Because that worked so well for Nortel when they wanted to turn everything into a switch.
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Because there are also OCP network equipments, like a switch design from Facebook that lets you do software defined networks easily.
What's interesting is that the networking piece includes open sourcing the ASIC firmware. ASICs improve network performance by implementing hardware switching, routing, etc.
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Hate to break it to ya software has always defined networks.
There is a lot of noise about moving the management side out of the chassis. This does not magically make a L3 switch with a a 32k entry fib work as a core BGP router. In some ways it's nice you can stop paying your vendor for massively overpriced licences to turn on sunk cost features. It gets very scary when they want to throw boxes all over the place but centralize management. It realy seems like an excuse to keep putting in pitifully small CP
FB & GOOG - different tiers (Score:5, Interesting)
.
That makes sense because Facebook's service requirements are not transportable to other industries, but Facebook's hardware needs may be.
Meanwhile, google is providing services to companies, and is looking to make those services transportable.
I wouldn't say that google is "dismissing" Facebook's strategy but instead, google is working a few levels above it.
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Facebook is trying to band together with 'like-minded' large companies to wrangle the manufacturers to get better CAPEX by hopefully landing in a spot where switching between Lenovo, HP, Dell, Pegatron, Tyan, Supermicro without even a thought is possible to let them chase the cheapest of the cheapest of the cheapest offering without any chance of a company deriving value from existing footprint. Facebook can get some more leverage by partnering with other companies and has no particular competing agenda in
What is there to stop Google from adopting OCP? (Score:1)
I wouldn't say that google is "dismissing" Facebook's strategy but instead, google is working a few levels above it
I am not disputing what you say but to add one crucial thing ...
Currently there is absolutely nothing which prevents Google from adopting the OCP standard, and/or using the OCP hardware
Google's concern right now is to get people to use their cloud, hardware wise Google has a lot of options available to them:
1. Continue to keep their hardware proprietary
2. Adopt the OCP hardware
3. Hybrid their hardware with that of OCP offerings (which means they have to opensource the changes they made to OCP)
4.
Bit of a failure, really. (Score:1)
So they basically "invented" 21" wide racks, between 19" and 23" already existing. Still backwardian. Still boring.
So many chances to actually put some modern considerations to good use in their specs. But nooooo.
All they really did was show they're a big boy by throwing their weight around. It didn't actually improve anything.
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Well, they also now have 19" racks too, because MS decided they needed 19", so MS contributed 19" based designs so you don't know how an OCP server will mount unless you specifically look into it.. They also have a lot of 'specifications' that are more problem statements without any answers or guidance than anything actionable. If a random company said "we'll proudly don the OCP badge if you let us 'contribute' our 23" racks", then you'd have 23" racks.
There's been some good work in there, but there isn't
Misleading article (Score:2, Insightful)
They compare free open source software which is a product itself with open source designs for hardware which are just specifications hardware is still not free
*shrug* (Score:1)
The Open Compute Project initiative was announced in April 2011 by Facebook to openly share designs of data center products.[1] The effort came out of a redesign of Facebook's data center in Prineville, Oregon.[2] After two years, it was admitted that "the new design is still a long way from live data centers."[3] However, some aspects published were used in the Prineville center to improve the energy efficiency, as measured by the power usage effectiveness index defined by The Green Grid.[4]
The Open Compute Project Foundation is a 501(c)(6) non-profit incorporated in the state of Delaware. Cole Crawford serves as the Foundation's Executive Director. Currently there are 7 individuals on the Board of Directors. Frank Frankovsky, formerly of Facebook is the Foundation's President and Chairman. Andy Bechtolsheim, Jason Taylor (Facebook), Jason Waxman(Intel), Don Duet(Goldman Sachs), Mark Roenick (Rackspace), and Bill Laing (Microsoft) are also Open Compute board members.
In 2015 March Apple, Cisco and Juniper Networks joined the project.[5]
TFA (Score:1)
That means that anyone can look at, use, or modify the designs of the hugely expensive computers that big companies use to run their operations — all for free.
The idea of using XML as a hardware platform seemed a paint huffer's delight. .human readable," said Huffer.
"But. .
Revealing gratefulness of the Chinese hardware guy (Score:2)
OPC ensures that manufacturing will never return to the US.
If there's no IP barriers all the competitive advantages are in the manufacturing process.
It's a huge gift to the Chinese hardware sector, because that's all they have.