Oxide computer 3D rack guided tour

(explorer.oxide.computer)

51 points | by darthcloud 3 days ago

8 comments

  • andrewl-hn 2 minutes ago
    This design feels very obvious-in-hindsight. Consolidate power adapters and networking, replace cabling with pluggable slots. It's something similar to what IBM mainframes or Sun cabinets could've looked like. Somehow hardware giants like Dell, HP, SuperMicro, etc didn't make a product like this, even at their peak in 2000s or during cloud boom in 2010s. I wonder why?

    Beautiful machine, and fun to see Illumos heart still beating inside!

  • dorongrinstein 1 minute ago
    I met Bryan Cantrill the CEO of Oxide many years ago. He's awesome. I am rooting for Oxide to become as big as Dell.
  • jjice 41 minutes ago
    I want Oxide to do so well. The product is a breath of fresh air in the era of cloud providers. As an engineer, I'd kill to get to work with their hardware.

    Not to mention that working at Oxide sounds like a modern Sun Microsystems with the ideology that team has. Highly recommend their podcast "Oxide and Friends", and their original "On The Metal" show.

    I've attempted to apply to their company multiple times over the years, only to be stun locked by the application process. Not because it's a bad process, but because I feel I'm not up to par as an engineer. Maybe one day I'll go through with it.

    • convolvatron 33 minutes ago
      I've gone through the same process, not so much that I don't think I would be worth considering, but serious code and documentation examples aren't something I can really give out given that they're proprietary. this last winter I started a whole guest-kernel based syscall intermediation and distribution framework in rust just for the application. with all kinds of design documents. I was about 30% finished by the time I landed a job somewhere else :)

      by I still applaud the intent. I self-selected out by giving into scope creep

      • TZubiri 25 minutes ago
        I'd be interested in the context if you'd be willing to share.

        It sounds from the outside like Oxide has an interview process that requires some low level engineering work to be delivered? Maybe I got that wrong.

        • convolvatron 23 minutes ago
          no, they want a questionnaire, a coding sample, and an example of technical writing. there's a reasonable interpretation of that that doesn't involve writing a distributed unix.
          • TZubiri 18 minutes ago
            Sounds approachable, and something that would be evaluated based on merit.

            As usual, I'm assuming the assignment is evaluated based on a reasonable time-commitment. From what the recruiting experts tell me, it's a good strategy to spend as much time as possible, the deliverable is better, and the optics aren't bad either, it signals investment into the application instead of signalling spray and pray application broadcasting.

  • arjie 36 minutes ago
    Oh wow, they're on the Epyc 9005 series now. Very cool. Dude, what a monster of a machine that rack is haha. Bloody hell.
  • PoignardAzur 19 minutes ago
    The screen goes black for me after ~5s. I'm using Firefox on Linux, probably something to do with that.
  • burnrate 45 minutes ago
    I wonder how much a rack like this costs
    • LoganDark 40 minutes ago
      IIRC I heard that a single rack is upwards of $600k–$1m, but that was before the AI boom/crisis.
      • TZubiri 22 minutes ago
        I don't recall if the price was confidential, but I will say that it's higher than that, and that it has been influenced by the RAM cost increase.

        If I recall when comparing to competition, it was premium priced, for sure, but it's more that it's so dense that you had to compare 1 Oxide rack to like 4 commodity racks. Spec for spec I recall that the premium for the verticality wasn't that high.

    • jeffbee 41 minutes ago
      With only 288 128GiB DDR5 ECC DIMMs? I'm sure that doesn't cost much.
  • DiabloD3 44 minutes ago
    Thats neat.
  • RobLach 47 minutes ago
    Neat