5 ms·

> Your time, hopefully, isn't. Even on low-end hardware, the cost of competent deployment amortizes to zero. Like most industrial pursuits, the deployment cos

> Your time, hopefully, isn't. Even on low-end hardware, the cost of competent deployment amortizes to zero. Like most industrial pursuits, the deployment cost of the first box is high; the cost for each additional box is orders-of-magnitude less. Add the end of Moore's Law into the mix--getting many years of economic service out of boxes that would have been obsolete within the year--the cost is lower still. There are people out there who've been running aisles of rock-bottom supermicro gear, for almost decade, without incident. Gabriel's Law: "worse is better". FAANG rode Gabriel's law to the bank. > Then that would be a vanity project for Oracle As for "in-pocket", I did not mean Frankenstein's Solaris. I meant Operation Paperclip. Knowledge was acquired on someone else's dime, and it would be imprudent to leave this talent disengaged--to be retrieved and used by one's competitors. > Nobody but nvidia has anything hw-wise in that area Exactly. That is the castle that needs to be stormed. That is where the treasure is. 0xide is running a war against an already-dying kingdom. They might as well be playing minecraft.

panick21_ 3y ago
> There are people out there who've been running aisles of rock-bottom supermicro gear, for almost decade, without incident. Have there? But not you I take it? Bryan worked at joyant and ran a public cloud on dell and supermicro gear. And it seems they had plenty of problems. I have heard the same sentiment im other places. Additional evidence comes from the cloud providers themselves. Why did all of them develop their own stuff if operations with that stuff is so problem free? Google tried it and rejected it quickly.
- hello_computer 3y ago
  > Have there? But not you I take it? I have a variety of customers running a variety of different x86_64 gear. From an up-time perspective, there has been low correlation between price and reliability. If we're talking non-x86_64 systems--like zSeries or industrial control systems--then the price and the reliability are correlated, but that is not an x86_64 market, and probably never will be. > Bryan worked at joyant and ran a public cloud on dell and supermicro gear. And it seems they had plenty of problems. Never called it perfect. I wrote "worse is better"--the "best" losing out to the "good enough". The supermicros I mentioned were "good enough". Of course Cantrill et. al. had problems with them, since they were running Solaris/Indiana on x86_64 gear, expecting Sun-tier SLAs. They'd need Sun-tier hardware to accomplish that, but the Sun that made that kind of gear is dead, just like Joyent. They are both dead for a reason: worse is better. Google also used bare-bones discount servers in their early days (not wasting money on brands, SLAs, and fancy cases[0]). > Additional evidence comes from the cloud providers themselves. Why did all of them develop their own stuff if operations with that stuff is so problem free? Let's say there are three tiers of users 1) small-fries who spin up a few AWS images, 2) businesses who've grown to the point where public cloud is no longer economical, but not invested enough in computing to justify developing their own hardware, and 3) FAANG, who have so much money and so much need that it would be absolutely stupid for them not to develop their own hardware. At FAANG-scale it's no longer just about cost or quality; it's about being in control of your own business. #2 would seem to be 0xide's target market, but as someone who inhabits that space, I am unimpressed. [0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Google%E2%80%99s_First_Production_Server.jpg https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Google%E2%80%99s_First_...
  - panick21_ 3y ago
    > Never called it perfect. I wrote "worse is better"--the "best" losing out to the "good enough". What good enough is depends. Sure maybe if you built new processors and everything it would be even better. But using the same processor at the core as typical servers, and just sounding it with a slightly different architecture can improve things. That's exactly what google does too. > Of course Cantrill et. al. had problems with them, since they were running Solaris/Indiana on x86_64 gear Ah the old 'its the os fault' excuse. Classic. > dead, just like Joyent Joyent was bought, it didn't go bust and the actual infrastructure is still running. > Google also used bare-bones discount servers in their early days Again, that's exactly what I am saying. Why do you think google stopped doing that? > At FAANG-scale it's no longer just about cost or quality; it's about being in control of your own business. Except if you actually listen to interviews of the people who did those innovations at Google and co, they stopped working with the traditional vendors and did costume stuff, it was because they couldn't get the quality out of the traditional architecture. That is also why google invested in coreboot, linuxboot and are running their internal infrastructure on things like NERF firmware, instead of the standard you get from the typical vendors. > #2 would seem to be 0xide's target market, but as someone who inhabits that space, I am unimpressed. Have you done an actual detailed comparison with real price quotes compared to a traditional system plus all the software and setup and so on? Because if you haven't its not worth much as an opinion.
    - hello_computer 3y ago
      > Ah the old 'its the os fault' excuse. Classic. The problem wasn't Solaris. The problem wasn't x86. The problem was Cantrill & Co.'s expectations. The industry began moving to availability in software instead of hardware back in the early 2000s. Premium iron vendors fell on hard times because of this. They had a premium product with a premium price, but demand for it dried-up. Cantrill came from one of those companies, and is right to think commodity x86 hardware is crap in comparison, but it doesn't matter for the mid-tier and below markets anymore. They've already cleared this obstacle. > That is also why google... What Google does is irrelevant to this discussion. That is not 0xide's market. Businesses seriously competing in the compute space are going to vertically integrate as much as possible--not just motherboards and lights-out management, but all the way down to the CPU: Google's Cypress & Maple, AWS's Graviton, Apple's M1. Switching to 0xide kit is not vertical integration.

panick21_ 3y ago

> There are people out there who've been running aisles of rock-bottom supermicro gear, for almost decade, without incident. Have there? But not you I take it? Bryan worked at joyant and ran a public cloud on dell and supermicro gear. And it seems they had plenty of problems. I have heard the same sentiment im other places. Additional evidence comes from the cloud providers themselves. Why did all of them develop their own stuff if operations with that stuff is so problem free? Google tried it and rejected it quickly.

hello_computer 3y ago
> Have there? But not you I take it? I have a variety of customers running a variety of different x86_64 gear. From an up-time perspective, there has been low correlation between price and reliability. If we're talking non-x86_64 systems--like zSeries or industrial control systems--then the price and the reliability are correlated, but that is not an x86_64 market, and probably never will be. > Bryan worked at joyant and ran a public cloud on dell and supermicro gear. And it seems they had plenty of problems. Never called it perfect. I wrote "worse is better"--the "best" losing out to the "good enough". The supermicros I mentioned were "good enough". Of course Cantrill et. al. had problems with them, since they were running Solaris/Indiana on x86_64 gear, expecting Sun-tier SLAs. They'd need Sun-tier hardware to accomplish that, but the Sun that made that kind of gear is dead, just like Joyent. They are both dead for a reason: worse is better. Google also used bare-bones discount servers in their early days (not wasting money on brands, SLAs, and fancy cases[0]). > Additional evidence comes from the cloud providers themselves. Why did all of them develop their own stuff if operations with that stuff is so problem free? Let's say there are three tiers of users 1) small-fries who spin up a few AWS images, 2) businesses who've grown to the point where public cloud is no longer economical, but not invested enough in computing to justify developing their own hardware, and 3) FAANG, who have so much money and so much need that it would be absolutely stupid for them not to develop their own hardware. At FAANG-scale it's no longer just about cost or quality; it's about being in control of your own business. #2 would seem to be 0xide's target market, but as someone who inhabits that space, I am unimpressed. [0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Google%E2%80%99s_First_Production_Server.jpg https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Google%E2%80%99s_First_...
- panick21_ 3y ago
  > Never called it perfect. I wrote "worse is better"--the "best" losing out to the "good enough". What good enough is depends. Sure maybe if you built new processors and everything it would be even better. But using the same processor at the core as typical servers, and just sounding it with a slightly different architecture can improve things. That's exactly what google does too. > Of course Cantrill et. al. had problems with them, since they were running Solaris/Indiana on x86_64 gear Ah the old 'its the os fault' excuse. Classic. > dead, just like Joyent Joyent was bought, it didn't go bust and the actual infrastructure is still running. > Google also used bare-bones discount servers in their early days Again, that's exactly what I am saying. Why do you think google stopped doing that? > At FAANG-scale it's no longer just about cost or quality; it's about being in control of your own business. Except if you actually listen to interviews of the people who did those innovations at Google and co, they stopped working with the traditional vendors and did costume stuff, it was because they couldn't get the quality out of the traditional architecture. That is also why google invested in coreboot, linuxboot and are running their internal infrastructure on things like NERF firmware, instead of the standard you get from the typical vendors. > #2 would seem to be 0xide's target market, but as someone who inhabits that space, I am unimpressed. Have you done an actual detailed comparison with real price quotes compared to a traditional system plus all the software and setup and so on? Because if you haven't its not worth much as an opinion.
  - hello_computer 3y ago
    > Ah the old 'its the os fault' excuse. Classic. The problem wasn't Solaris. The problem wasn't x86. The problem was Cantrill & Co.'s expectations. The industry began moving to availability in software instead of hardware back in the early 2000s. Premium iron vendors fell on hard times because of this. They had a premium product with a premium price, but demand for it dried-up. Cantrill came from one of those companies, and is right to think commodity x86 hardware is crap in comparison, but it doesn't matter for the mid-tier and below markets anymore. They've already cleared this obstacle. > That is also why google... What Google does is irrelevant to this discussion. That is not 0xide's market. Businesses seriously competing in the compute space are going to vertically integrate as much as possible--not just motherboards and lights-out management, but all the way down to the CPU: Google's Cypress & Maple, AWS's Graviton, Apple's M1. Switching to 0xide kit is not vertical integration.