Hardware Podcasts

Ep. 27 | Two Google Senior VPs of Engineering: From Shipping Containers to Today's Data Centers

Moore's Lobby · 22 Jun 2021 · 58m · Episode 12

What this episode covers

Google Fellows Luiz Barroso and Amin Vahdat discuss the evolution of Google's data center infrastructure, from early 'broom closet' colocation facilities and shipping container prototypes to modern, energy-efficient warehouse-scale systems. They explain how Google shifted from relying on commodity hardware to designing custom domain-specific accelerators like TPUs for machine learning and video processing to overcome the limits of Moore's Law. The conversation also covers the critical importance of energy proportionality, Power Usage Effectiveness (PUE), and the cultural philosophy of 'healthy hubris' that drives Google's engineering decisions.

Most relevant to

large enterprises

Topics

Mentioned

Companies
Google, Digital Equipment, Fry's Electronics
Chips
TPU
Also
The Datacenter as a Computer

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