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How oxide cuts data center power consumption in half

oxide.computer

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Re: How oxide cuts data center power consumption in half

#131

Post by bcantrill »

KenoFischer wrote: post #108

I really love Oxide to an unhealthy amount (it's become a bit of a meme among my colleagues), but sometimes I do wonder whether they went about their go-to-market the right way. They really tried to do everything at once - custom servers, custom router, custom rack, everything. Their accomplishments are technologically impressive, but, as somebody who is in a position to make purchasing decisions, not economically at…

First, thanks for the love -- it's deeply appreciated! Our go-to-market is not an accident: we spent a ton of time (too much time?) looking at how every company had endeavored (and failed) in this space, and then considering a bunch of other options besides. Plugging into a "cheap Gigabyte" system wouldn't actually allow us to build what we've built, and we know this viscerally: before we had our system built, we had to have hardware to build our software on -- which was... a bunch of cheap Gigabyte systems. We had the special pain of relearning all of the reasons why we took the approach we've taken: these systems are a non-starter with respect to foundation.

You may very well not need the system that we have built, but lots of people do -- and the price point versus the alternatives (public cloud or on-prem commodity HW + pretty price SW) has proven to be pretty compelling. I don't know if we'll ever have a product that hits your price point (which sounds like... the cost of Gigabyte plus a few thousand bucks?), but at least the software is all open source!

Re: How oxide cuts data center power consumption in half

#132

Post by p_l »

zamadatix wrote: post #123
p_l wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's more a case of selection of optimization parameters and corresponding economy. It's not so much that apple towers over others in design (though they are absolutely no slouches and have wins there) but their design team is in position to coordinate with product directly and as such isn't as limited by "but will it sell in high enough numbers for the excel sheet at investor's desk?" The real show stopper for years…

Not sure what you mean wrt to Apple's uniqueness. AMD/Mediatek/Intel/Qualcomm/Samsung only make margin on how well they invest on their designs vs their competitors and they'd all love to be outshipping each other and Apple in any market. All, including Apple, also rely on the same manufacturer for their top products and the ones (Intel/Samsung) with alternatives have not been able to use that as an advantage for top…

Ampere is a bright spot in all of this, indeed. Just considerably late. I remember being bombarded by "ARM servers are going to eat the world" in 2013, but ARM couldn't deliver SBSA in shape that would make it possible and to this day I am left with serious doubts if any ARM board will work out right (there are bright spots though).

As for Apple "uniqueness", I met a lot of people who think that Apple "just" has so much better design team, when it's similar to what you say and the unique part is them being able to properly narrow their design space instead of chasing cost-conscious manufacturers.

Re: How oxide cuts data center power consumption in half

#133

Post by alberth »

KenoFischer wrote: post #108

I really love Oxide to an unhealthy amount (it's become a bit of a meme among my colleagues), but sometimes I do wonder whether they went about their go-to-market the right way. They really tried to do everything at once - custom servers, custom router, custom rack, everything. Their accomplishments are technologically impressive, but, as somebody who is in a position to make purchasing decisions, not economically at…

You just described why commodity servers won over engineered systems that came before Oxide (like Nutanix, Sun / Oracle Exa*, VCE etc).

So I totally agree with your go-to-market comment, because it’s also a bet against cloud.

I wish them luck though.

Re: How oxide cuts data center power consumption in half

#134

Post by huijzer »

> Here’s a sobering thought: today, data centers already consume 1-2% of the world’s power, and that percentage will likely rise to 3-4% by the end of the decade.

I don't get this marketing angle. I've made arguments here before that the cost of compute from a energy perspective is often negligible. If Google Maps, for example, can save you 1 mile due to better routing, then that is several orders of magnitude more efficient [1].

If it uses less resources, it uses less resources. Everybody (businesses and individuals) loves that.

[1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=huijzer&next=4206549...

Re: How oxide cuts data center power consumption in half

#135

Post by KenoFischer »

bcantrill wrote: post #131
KenoFischer wrote: post #108

I really love Oxide to an unhealthy amount (it's become a bit of a meme among my colleagues), but sometimes I do wonder whether they went about their go-to-market the right way. They really tried to do everything at once - custom servers, custom router, custom rack, everything. Their accomplishments are technologically impressive, but, as somebody who is in a position to make purchasing decisions, not economically at…

First, thanks for the love -- it's deeply appreciated! Our go-to-market is not an accident: we spent a ton of time (too much time?) looking at how every company had endeavored (and failed) in this space, and then considering a bunch of other options besides. Plugging into a "cheap Gigabyte" system wouldn't actually allow us to build what we've built, and we know this viscerally: before we had our system built, we had…

Please forgive my tergiversation. I fully trust that you know your path and I know how annoying it is to be why-dont-they-just'd. As I said, I'm rooting for you.

Re: How oxide cuts data center power consumption in half

#136

Post by hinkley »

hnthrowaway0328 wrote: post #49
zamalek wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's normally incredibly difficult for employees to disrupt at massive companies that would be the type which runs a data center. Disruption usually enters the corp in a sales deck, much like the one Oxide would have. It's stupid, but that's why we all have jobs.

I think engineers should be more forceful to lead their own visions instead being led by accountants and lawyers. After engineers have the power of implementation and de-implementstion. They need to step into dirty politics and bend other people's views. It's either theirs or ours. Win-win is a fallacy.

Once the accountants are convinced the entire company is about them, there’s not much the engineers can do. They just starve you out by refusing to buy anything. It’s a big reason why open source is as successful as it is. It’s free so they can’t stop you with the checkbook.

Re: How oxide cuts data center power consumption in half

#137

Post by VTimofeenko »

LeoPanthera wrote: post #87

I really wish Oxide had homelab/prosumer grade stuff. I'd be sending them so much money.

A ~20U rack working off residential 15/20A would have been so cool.

Though given how it's designed for the datacenters, I'd expect the thing to be pretty darn loud.

Re: How oxide cuts data center power consumption in half

#138

Post by shrubble »

PreInternet01 wrote: post #5

"If only they used DC from the wall socket, all those H100s would be green" is, not, I think, the hill you want to die on. But, yeah, my three 18MW/y racks agree that more power efficiency would be nice, it's just that Rewrite It In (Safe) Rust is unlikely to help with that...

18MW/year is not a real unit of measurement; did you mean MWh?

Re: How oxide cuts data center power consumption in half

#139

Post by [deleted] »

bcantrill wrote: post #131
KenoFischer wrote: post #108

I really love Oxide to an unhealthy amount (it's become a bit of a meme among my colleagues), but sometimes I do wonder whether they went about their go-to-market the right way. They really tried to do everything at once - custom servers, custom router, custom rack, everything. Their accomplishments are technologically impressive, but, as somebody who is in a position to make purchasing decisions, not economically at…

First, thanks for the love -- it's deeply appreciated! Our go-to-market is not an accident: we spent a ton of time (too much time?) looking at how every company had endeavored (and failed) in this space, and then considering a bunch of other options besides. Plugging into a "cheap Gigabyte" system wouldn't actually allow us to build what we've built, and we know this viscerally: before we had our system built, we had…

[deleted]

Re: How oxide cuts data center power consumption in half

#140

Post by EvanAnderson »

applied_heat wrote: post #126
walrus01 wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

big ass rectifiers big ass solid copper busbars huge gauge copper cables going around a central office (google "telcoflex IV") big DC breaker/fuse panels specialized dc fuse panels for power distribution at the top of racks, using little tiny fuses 100% overhead steel ladder rack type cable trays, since your typical telco CO was never a raised floor type environment (UNLIKE legacy 1960s/1970s mainframe computer rooms…

Can you give me a link to this 1.3 gbps radio product? I have some Alcatel radios with waveguides on a licensed band that only do 50 megabit that I would upgrade if there was something that could get more bits out of the same bandwidth and towers.

I don't have a link handy (on my phone), but I was involved in installs of licensed Cambium 18Ghz radios last year that were pushing >1Gbps. PTP-800 was the model number, if memory serves.
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