45 ms·

The difference is that when you're buying a x86 system, the entire CPU bringup (incl. AMEGAS/openSIL on AMD) runs proprietary and poorly documented firmware. Yo

The difference is that when you're buying a x86 system, the entire CPU bringup (incl. AMEGAS/openSIL on AMD) runs proprietary and poorly documented firmware. You're entirely at the mercy of the vendor. Oxide has put immense effort into writing open-source platform initialization code, and built their own open-source BMC/RoT solution.

steve1977 3y ago
So effectively I’m at the mercy of Oxide, at least as long as their system does not become some kind of standard. Not in theory maybe, but in practice. Because as a customer, I would probably also need to put in immense effort to understand and maintain that software myself.
- EvanAnderson 3y ago
  Their firmware is open source. You can pay whoever you want to maintain it. You can't do that with Dell, HP, Supermicro, and the unknowable rabbit hole of ODMs and sub-suppliers and contractors who actually make the hardware and firmware for these companies. Until you've dealt with a malfunctioning Dell or HP server and have to live with being told "we don't know why it acts that way, we'll try to get the ODM to repro" I don't think you can appreciate how cool Oxide's offering seems.
  - steve1977 3y ago
    If I have server under maintenance with Dell or HP, they would replace the server or component for me in such a case. Which would probably be a lot faster than trying to find someone who could maintain some non-standard firmware (as good as it might be). Even if I had to replace the server on my own cost it would probably still be cheaper. And it would be easy to replace because it's commodity hardware, that was kind of my point.
    - EvanAnderson 3y ago
      I have had experiences with tens of Dell servers with the same model NIC having the same fault. The servers were absolutely under maintenance. I fought with tech support for weeks before I was finally told it was a driver/firmware issue and that I had to work around it (and lose performance for the sake of reliability). Maybe if I had hundreds of servers Dell would have helped me out. At the scale of tens they told me to take what I got. The Customer got a lower performance solution and nobody anywhere could help them for any amount of money, short of replacing the gear. That's just a performance issue. I've heard horror stories about reliability-- All the way down to disk firmware and RAID controllers. I consider myself lucky.
      - steve1977 3y ago
        Not saying things like that don’t happen. But how much effort (or money) do you think it would have taken to fix this issue if the NIC firmware was open source? And with standard hardware, depending on the model, you might have had the option to add dedicated PCIe NICs for example. Not great, but at least something. Now try that with something proprietary (as in non-standard) like this Oxide system.
    - dist1ll 3y ago
      Replacing hardware? Sure, they'll help. What about debugging firmware though? I'm curious how much help you would get from Dell fixing and patching complicated firmware errors. A side benefit of the openness is that firmware issues can be discussed publicly, and the patches can be upstreamed into the main repo and made available to every customer (and even competitor). This gives you the kind of network effects that you'd never see in a locked-down ecosystem.
      - steve1977 3y ago
        > What about debugging firmware though? I'm curious how much help you would get from Dell fixing and patching complicated firmware errors. If they replace the broken component with a working component, then I don’t care how they fix their firmware errors.

steve1977 3y ago

So effectively I’m at the mercy of Oxide, at least as long as their system does not become some kind of standard. Not in theory maybe, but in practice. Because as a customer, I would probably also need to put in immense effort to understand and maintain that software myself.

EvanAnderson 3y ago
Their firmware is open source. You can pay whoever you want to maintain it. You can't do that with Dell, HP, Supermicro, and the unknowable rabbit hole of ODMs and sub-suppliers and contractors who actually make the hardware and firmware for these companies. Until you've dealt with a malfunctioning Dell or HP server and have to live with being told "we don't know why it acts that way, we'll try to get the ODM to repro" I don't think you can appreciate how cool Oxide's offering seems.
- steve1977 3y ago
  If I have server under maintenance with Dell or HP, they would replace the server or component for me in such a case. Which would probably be a lot faster than trying to find someone who could maintain some non-standard firmware (as good as it might be). Even if I had to replace the server on my own cost it would probably still be cheaper. And it would be easy to replace because it's commodity hardware, that was kind of my point.
  - EvanAnderson 3y ago
    I have had experiences with tens of Dell servers with the same model NIC having the same fault. The servers were absolutely under maintenance. I fought with tech support for weeks before I was finally told it was a driver/firmware issue and that I had to work around it (and lose performance for the sake of reliability). Maybe if I had hundreds of servers Dell would have helped me out. At the scale of tens they told me to take what I got. The Customer got a lower performance solution and nobody anywhere could help them for any amount of money, short of replacing the gear. That's just a performance issue. I've heard horror stories about reliability-- All the way down to disk firmware and RAID controllers. I consider myself lucky.
    - steve1977 3y ago
      Not saying things like that don’t happen. But how much effort (or money) do you think it would have taken to fix this issue if the NIC firmware was open source? And with standard hardware, depending on the model, you might have had the option to add dedicated PCIe NICs for example. Not great, but at least something. Now try that with something proprietary (as in non-standard) like this Oxide system.
  - dist1ll 3y ago
    Replacing hardware? Sure, they'll help. What about debugging firmware though? I'm curious how much help you would get from Dell fixing and patching complicated firmware errors. A side benefit of the openness is that firmware issues can be discussed publicly, and the patches can be upstreamed into the main repo and made available to every customer (and even competitor). This gives you the kind of network effects that you'd never see in a locked-down ecosystem.
    - steve1977 3y ago
      > What about debugging firmware though? I'm curious how much help you would get from Dell fixing and patching complicated firmware errors. If they replace the broken component with a working component, then I don’t care how they fix their firmware errors.