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Jessie was employed by Docker, Bryan was CTO of Joyent and Steve was COO of Joyent. They all did some important contribution to the container ecosystem and they

Jessie was employed by Docker, Bryan was CTO of Joyent and Steve was COO of Joyent. They all did some important contribution to the container ecosystem and they are now starting what appears to be a company selling custom cloud hardware.

jonny_eh 7y ago
> custom cloud hardware Uhh, you mean computers?
- sangnoir 7y ago
  Looking at their pedigree, I'd hazard that the computers are geared towards running containerized workloads, so "custom cloud hardware" sounds about right.
  - codeflo 7y ago
    That seems to be the common theory, but what does that even mean? There's nothing all that special about running containers at the hardware level, they are really just groups of processes that the kernel manages a certain way.
    - hector_vasquez 7y ago
      People who worked at Docker, Joyent, and Sun would be the ones to answer your question :). Consider the possibility that the kernel and the h/w are increasingly at odds on commodity server hardware.
    - sangnoir 7y ago
      > That seems to be the common theory, but what does that even mean? It appears their start-up exists to answer this question. I strongly doubt their mission is "compete with Supermicro & Taiwanese ODMs on general-purpose computers"
      - LegitShady 7y ago
        He means technically practically what is the difference?
    - mochomocha 7y ago
      That's not completely accurate. Hardware & OSes have not been designed for heavy multi-tenancy, leading to (among other issues) cache interference. At Netflix [1], we have to do quite a bit of work to undo that. Bigger orgs like Google have spent more than a decade improving the Linux scheduler in their own fork for similar reasons. [1] https://medium.com/netflix-techblog/predictive-cpu-isolation-of-containers-at-netflix-91f014d856c7 https://medium.com/netflix-techblog/predictive-cpu-isolation...
      - codeflo 7y ago
        Very interesting link, thanks. Obviously your use case goes way beyond running a standard Docker installation. It sounds like you really want the kernel to schedule containers instead of processes -- which it doesn't really do by default, hence my comment. Perhaps it shouldn't be surprising, that you're able to get these clear performance gains from a highly optimized special-purpose scheduler. Still, I was a bit surprised. :) However, that's at the OS level. What can realistically be done at the hardware level? It must be possible in theory to design a CPU that's better at this kind of context switching, but I don't know if a new "computer company" really wants to go there.
      - shaklee3 7y ago
        While that's true, this particular company doesn't seem to be targeting anything that would improve containers (OS optimizations, new CPU). So I think the OP was correct in that simply changing the BMC or making it more secure on boot won't affect containers.
        puzza007 7y ago
        I'd be surprised if they didn't leverage something like the SmartOS container capabilities https://www.joyent.com/smartos https://www.joyent.com/smartos
- darkarmani 7y ago
  My watch is a computer, so I don't think they want to make general purpose computers.
martyvis 7y ago
>selling Not for a long while.

jonny_eh 7y ago

> custom cloud hardware Uhh, you mean computers?

sangnoir 7y ago
Looking at their pedigree, I'd hazard that the computers are geared towards running containerized workloads, so "custom cloud hardware" sounds about right.
- codeflo 7y ago
  That seems to be the common theory, but what does that even mean? There's nothing all that special about running containers at the hardware level, they are really just groups of processes that the kernel manages a certain way.
  - hector_vasquez 7y ago
    People who worked at Docker, Joyent, and Sun would be the ones to answer your question :). Consider the possibility that the kernel and the h/w are increasingly at odds on commodity server hardware.
  - sangnoir 7y ago
    > That seems to be the common theory, but what does that even mean? It appears their start-up exists to answer this question. I strongly doubt their mission is "compete with Supermicro & Taiwanese ODMs on general-purpose computers"
    - LegitShady 7y ago
      He means technically practically what is the difference?
  - mochomocha 7y ago
    That's not completely accurate. Hardware & OSes have not been designed for heavy multi-tenancy, leading to (among other issues) cache interference. At Netflix [1], we have to do quite a bit of work to undo that. Bigger orgs like Google have spent more than a decade improving the Linux scheduler in their own fork for similar reasons. [1] https://medium.com/netflix-techblog/predictive-cpu-isolation-of-containers-at-netflix-91f014d856c7 https://medium.com/netflix-techblog/predictive-cpu-isolation...
    - codeflo 7y ago
      Very interesting link, thanks. Obviously your use case goes way beyond running a standard Docker installation. It sounds like you really want the kernel to schedule containers instead of processes -- which it doesn't really do by default, hence my comment. Perhaps it shouldn't be surprising, that you're able to get these clear performance gains from a highly optimized special-purpose scheduler. Still, I was a bit surprised. :) However, that's at the OS level. What can realistically be done at the hardware level? It must be possible in theory to design a CPU that's better at this kind of context switching, but I don't know if a new "computer company" really wants to go there.
    - shaklee3 7y ago
      While that's true, this particular company doesn't seem to be targeting anything that would improve containers (OS optimizations, new CPU). So I think the OP was correct in that simply changing the BMC or making it more secure on boot won't affect containers.
      - puzza007 7y ago
        I'd be surprised if they didn't leverage something like the SmartOS container capabilities https://www.joyent.com/smartos https://www.joyent.com/smartos
darkarmani 7y ago
My watch is a computer, so I don't think they want to make general purpose computers.

martyvis 7y ago

>selling Not for a long while.