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**Gerhard Lazu:** Recently. Even servers. I still have it upstairs. 2011, that's the last server which I've built with supermicro. It's still up there, in the loft. |
**Zac Smith:** There you go. \[laughs\] |
**Gerhard Lazu:** Not liquid-cooled, unfortunately... |
**Zac Smith:** In the PC world we had a standard called ATX. So you had an ATX case - ATX mini, whatever. And the cool thing about that was if you got an ATX case and somebody else made an ATX motherboard, and on the back of it you had an ATX cut-out on the pins, you could kind of make anything, and you didn't have to ... |
So that presents a huge logistical thing where we need to create a standard for the rack. And not like "Everybody build this computer", but "Everybody build to this standard mechanical form factor, so we can all connect." Almost like Nespresso capsules; they work in the machine. Or like how many things in construction,... |
But the other thing is actually related to -- you know, in terms of creating this ability to go into racks easier, is so that we can actually design a system where we can take the thing out of the rack. Today it's so expensive and complicated to put things in the market. We never think about how to move them from it. S... |
**Gerhard Lazu:** That's crazy. |
**Zac Smith:** That's crazy. So we've gotta do something about that, from a sustainability perspective, but also so we could do things like put the right technology in the right place, at the right time. For example, imagine if we put in your coolest c3.small processors into Ashborn. They're great, and whatever, but it... |
**Gerhard Lazu:** Oh, yes. |
**Zac Smith:** But that's not a possibility right now, without creating some sort of a STDIN-rack ATX case, so that way things can go and move, yet innovation can still happen within it. |
**Gerhard Lazu:** Is this where Open 19 comes in? Is this is it? Basically, Open 19 is what you've just described, this standardization? |
**Zac Smith:** \[40:01\] I would say that's the vision, which is instead of kind of dictating the technology, it's around creating an open standard for the mechanical form factor, and that's it. And that's really important, because having innovation to occur in both proprietary and open manners is very important for ha... |
We've chosen to invest in Open 19. It has a special kind of blind mate connector design. So the idea is that you shouldn't ever have to go to the back of the rack. You basically have a sheet metal kind of cage, and on the back you have blind mate power, blind mate data, and soon blind mate liquid cooling loops... So if... |
**Gerhard Lazu:** Yeah, I would get two of those, please. Can you send this FedEx guy up in my loft and slot two of those in? I would definitely want two of those as well. |
**Zac Smith:** And especially if we could do it with -- I mean, you just think about places like Equinix, or whatever... We could do it with reusable packaging. Like, "Okay, it's a brick. It's of this size, we've got a package... Like, plop-plop, here's your thing. We'll come back with a brick if you wanna move it. We'... |
**Gerhard Lazu:** Yeah. This sounds an awful lot like containers for software. That's exactly it - this is the standard... |
**Zac Smith:** Stuff it into here... |
**Gerhard Lazu:** Create the standard, and then everything is going to slot in. Like, spin up the container, and that's it. Well, okay. |
**Zac Smith:** That's a good phrase, and we can use our physical infrastructure at software speed. Then we need to create -- Kubernetes is to the containers as something is to the physical hardware mover |
**Gerhard Lazu:** I was too busy creating the hardware equivalent of Kubernetes... That's why I didn't create Kubernetes. \[laughter\] Okay... |
**Zac Smith:** There you go... You've uncovered the secret. |
**Break:** \[42:45\] |
**Gerhard Lazu:** So you've mentioned about multi-architecture becoming a thing, a big thing in the data center... And I have seen at least four developer workstations, like when it comes to the new Apple M1 chips... I think they're amazing. I don't have one, but I'm looking forward to it. I know that Intel has always ... |
**Zac Smith:** Don't worry, here comes Milan. It's coming out soon. |
**Gerhard Lazu:** Right. So how do you see this, between Intel AMD ARM, the whole chip play... I know that you provide ARM servers, but I haven't seen them publicly... But what does this multi-arch look like from an Equinix metal perspective? And from your perspective, from chips... Because you love chips even more tha... |
**Zac Smith:** \[laughs\] So let's see... The best way I can answer is we've always -- I loved investing in the ARM ecosystem because it really pulled us as a company back in (I think it was) 2016 when we launched the Cavium ThunderX, which was the first 64-bit server capable ARM processor that you could buy. There was... |
And the reason why we did that, which a lot of people questioned me from that time, especially at our company. They were like -- we're a very open and transparent business, which I was always very proud of, and people hopefully felt that they could say what they needed to say, or whatever they thought... And some peopl... |
**Gerhard Lazu:** \[laughs\] Not our problem... |
**Zac Smith:** But that's what I wanted to do with moving the ARM, was making sure that we could be really agnostic around what the technology was. And I always pushed people internally and said -- whether it's Intel, or ARM, or some other thing that somebody invents, which I'm sure they will, we wanna be really good a... |
And so ARM was a really great opportunity to push that envelope, because nothing worked. Like, everything you thought would work -- like, "Oh, we'll boot." "Well, not really." UEFI oops, that's a little different. Oh IPixie. All kinds of things throughout the bootchain process and whatnot had to be worked on until you ... |
And I remember one of the first ones we did is I called up -- what's his name? He used to be a client of mine way back in like the early 2000's, but he was the maintainer of the build infrastructure for Golang. And I remember calling him up through a friend and basically being like "Yo--" He worked at Google. "Can I gi... |
**Gerhard Lazu:** Oh, yes... |
**Zac Smith:** So we just kind of slowly built that up... And that was a really cool way for us to make sure that we're being agnostic on architecture. Now, of course, later Intel was challenged by AMD with their chiplet architecture, and Lisa's kind of forward-thinking vision... Mark Papermaster and whatnot creating a... |
\[48:11\] But now you have these three really good, really competitive now path back at Intel, he is moving hard, from what I can tell on the outside... And it's great to see three giant, pretty consolidated chip companies, all fighting it out. This is good. This is really great. And in the meantime, you have people li... |
**Gerhard Lazu:** Oh, yes. |
**Zac Smith:** He's like, "But it's so much faster to do it natively." I was like, "Whoa...! ARM laptops, here we go...!" \[laughs\] It's like, Ubuntu on your desktop, right? It's gonna happen one day. |
So I think if you've just got this nice, healthy, competitive silicon environment, you've got a bunch of different technology tracks that people are going off of... And frankly, the software world has become because of both (I think) the two critical ones, Apple having moved to ARM for its own chip - that's gonna help ... |
**Gerhard Lazu:** So you're the second person that I know of who speaks very passionately about RISC. Dan Mangum, from Upbound Crossplane, he's the first one... And I know that he's really passionate about RISC-V. Besides the open source model, is there something more to it? Is it like the potential what RISC-V could b... |
**Zac Smith:** There's a great podcast that I listened to, maybe it was last year, from NPR, about RISC-V. But it was great. People are using RISC-V just within their own proprietary silicon... For example, some of the big machine learning products and whatnot, they use a ton of RISC-V. And I think where it comes down ... |
**Gerhard Lazu:** So modern, is what you mean by that. |
**Zac Smith:** Yeah. |
**Gerhard Lazu:** Okay. |
**Zac Smith:** \[51:58\] And I think that's powerful. I'm not smart enough to even understand what that means, I just kind of have to believe that there's some pretty big advancements we've all made in 20 years in terms of how we can build architectures... So I think that that's gonna be the fun part, is to see what co... |
**Gerhard Lazu:** I see, I see. |
**Zac Smith:** And maybe the barrier to that just goes way down... Kind of how ARM did it for certain parts of the market, but maybe for the next phase. |
**Gerhard Lazu:** So I'm going to mention now the third article, the third blog post that you wrote, "Five predictions for hardware in 2021." I really enjoyed that. I would ask you how they played out, but let's leave that for another time, if ever... I'm more curious about your two predictions in hardware for 2022. Do... |
**Zac Smith:** Oh, that's a good one. I haven't thought about it yet, man... |
**Gerhard Lazu:** Well, you have to... Because I'm looking forward to that blog post, and you have to start writing it... \[laughs\] |
**Zac Smith:** Well, don't hold me back into 2022 but the two most interesting things I think of related to hardware right now... First and foremost, we're gonna have to solve the sustainability problem. This is just not gonna work. So whether it's because people come out with licensed CPUs, like "Sign up for your subs... |
**Gerhard Lazu:** At least the beginning of that, yeah. |
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