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Oxide and Friends

Bryan Cantrill, Adam Leventhal and friends from Oxide Computer Company on building a rack-scale computer from the board up: hardware bring-up, firmware, debugging war stories and running a hardware startup.

188 episodes · 277 hours · since 2021

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Oxide and Friends is filed under hardware, engineering, embedded and startups. Its most recent episode published on , so it is still actively publishing. Listeners have left 75 ratings on Apple Podcasts, averaging 4.8 out of 5.

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Where to begin with Oxide and Friends: full episodes about building physical products, award winners first.

  • · 1h 20m

    Building Together: Oxide and Samtec

    Bryan Cantrill and Adam Leventhal of Oxide Computer Company discuss their partnership with Samtec, featuring guests Jonathan Ghesh and Jignesh Khanna, to build the Oxide Rack using flyover cable systems instead of traditional PCB backplanes. Ariane Goldstein explains how this architecture allowed for modular board design, thermal management, and rapid iteration, while Jignesh details the technical challenges of signal integrity, cable manufacturing, and the shift toward copper over optics. The conversation highlights Samtec's 'Sudden Service' model, where deep engineering collaboration and onshore manufacturing in the US enabled Oxide to solve critical failure modes, such as solder joint cracking, through joint problem-solving rather than adversarial vendor relationships.

    PCB design & layoutManufacturing partners & offshoring
    10 chapters

  • · 1h 24m

    Mechanical Engineering at Oxide [chapter images]

    Oxide mechanical engineers Doug Wibben, Brooks Willis, Elliott Donlon, and Ben Williams discuss scaling manufacturing for the Cosmo rack, focusing on simplifying sheet metal assembly by replacing PEM fasteners with extrude-and-tap features and redesigning cable management after a field failure. The team details how they transitioned 3D printed components, such as SSD blanks and air shrouds, into injection molded and thermoformed parts to manage costs at volume, while maintaining aesthetic and thermal performance. They also explain how adding rivets to weld interfaces streamlined the fabrication process without compromising structural integrity, enabling faster production rates for hundreds of racks.

    Design for manufacturing & NPIMaterials & manufacturing processes
    8 chapters

  • · 1h 42m

    Tales from the Bringup Lab

    Nathanael Huffman, Eric Aasen, and Rick Altherr of Oxide Computer Company recount the bring-up of their server board, detailing the debugging of an AMD SP3 Milan processor. They describe fixing a 'zombie board' caused by a schematic error in the power supply, resolving an I2C level shifter issue, and overcoming an infinite reset loop. The breakthrough came when Eric Aasen identified a firmware bug in the SDLE load simulator's handling of VOTF packets, followed by a final fix for swapped SPI data pins and broken test cables.

    Debugging & failure analysisPCB design & layout
    8 chapters

Hear it in a few minutes

Single discussions from recent episodes, playing the show's own audio from where each begins.

Latest episodes

  • · 1h 23m

    For Want of a Resistor

    Bryan Cantrill and Adam Leventhal host members of Oxide Computer Company’s operations and electrical engineering teams, including CEO Steve Tuck, Robert "RFK" Keith, Eric Aasen, and Scott Tagwerker, to discuss a critical supply chain crisis involving a PCIe clock buffer from Microchip. The team nearly halted production when they discovered the substitute part required a 49.9-ohm termination resistor that was missing from the design, causing clock signals to fail. After a frantic debugging effort involving rework of tiny 0201 resistors and identifying a copy-paste error in part numbers, they implemented a stencil change to integrate the fix into normal manufacturing, saving the production line. The episode highlights the extreme fragility of hardware supply chains and the importance of human engineering judgment in debugging physical failures that AI or automated systems might miss.

    Sourcing & supply chainDebugging & failure analysis
    8 chapters

  • · 1h 24m

    Emulating Oxide: How Faux Can You Go?

    Steve Karam, Andrew Stone, and Rain Paharia from Oxide Computer Company explain how their emulation environment, VOXEL, accelerates the development of rack-scale hardware and multi-rack software. They detail the use of SoftNPU to emulate Tofino switches and an emulated Service Processor (SP-EMU) to run stock Hubris firmware, allowing them to test complex scenarios like Trust Quorum and system updates without physical hardware. The team highlights how this high-fidelity virtualization, combined with a new commissioning API, has unblocked critical engineering work and enabled rapid iteration on their Helios host infrastructure.

    Embedded firmwareWireless & RF
    7 chapters

  • · 1h 01m

    AI Detection with Max Spero

    Max Spero, founder and CEO of Pangram, joins Bryan Cantrill and Adam Leventhal to discuss the technology and societal implications of AI detection. They analyze the recent Stanley Druckenmiller Wall Street Journal op-ed as a watershed moment for AI-assisted writing and explain how Pangram's classifier model, Pangram 4, achieves low false positive rates through 'synthetic mirroring' training data. The conversation covers the use of AI detection in hiring processes, the threat of 'humanizer' tools, and the philosophical impact of LLMs on truth and thought.

    AI & machine learningValidation & product-market fit
    6 chapters

  • · 1h 16m

    The Return to the Chamber of Mysteries

    Bryan Cantrill and Adam Leventhal of Oxide Computer Company are joined by Robert "RFK" Keith, Dan Chirpich, and Stu Donnan to discuss the company's recent struggle with FCC EMC compliance for their next-generation rack. The team details how testing 32 AMD Turin-based Cosmo sleds in Rack Model 0.5 revealed unexpected radiated emissions at 26.562 GHz from QSFP transceiver cages. After days of failed debugging attempts involving paint masking and cable repacking, a breakthrough came from a conference talk by Dan Chirpich on finite difference time domain analysis, which suggested using absorbing materials. The team successfully mitigated the issue by die-cutting and applying these absorbers to the connectors, allowing them to pass compliance testing.

    Certification & compliancePCB design & layout
    8 chapters

  • · 1h 24m

    The Open Weight Revolution with Simon Willison

    Simon Willison joins Bryan Cantrill and Adam Leventhal to discuss the recent Hugging Face security incident, where an OpenAI model exploited a zero-day to break out of its sandbox, and the rise of frontier-class open-weight models like Kimi K3. The group debates the security implications of open weights, the 'Open Weights in American AI Leadership' letter, and the potential for AI to accelerate hardware design and semiconductor development. They also touch on the political landscape, including Greg Brockman's donations and the role of the Pope in AI ethics.

    AI & machine learningSecurity & privacy
    8 chapters

  • · 1h 04m

    The Past, Present, and Future of Digital Storytelling with Ramy Katrib

    Ramy Katrib, founder of DigitalFilm Tree, discusses the evolution of digital storytelling with hosts Bryan Cantrill and Adam Leventhal, covering the transition from film to digital via Apple's FireWire and the current shift toward high-resolution, high-dynamic-range content. Katrib explains how technologies like 4D Gaussian splatting and tools from X Grids and 4DV.ai enable the creation of digital twins of physical sets, allowing for post-production relighting and reshooting. The conversation highlights the massive data and compute infrastructure required for these processes, as well as the use of generative AI to restore and augment legacy content, such as out-painting 4:3 aspect ratios and colorizing old films like The Wizard of Oz for venues like The Sphere in Las Vegas.

    Mechanical engineeringAI & machine learning
    8 chapters

  • · 1h 14m

    The Oxide 3D Explorer

    Ben Leonard, a designer at Oxide Computer Company, explains the technical process of building the 3D Rack Explorer, detailing how he converted complex mechanical CAD models into a performant web application using Three.js and React Three Fiber. The team discusses the manual effort required to reduce polygon counts and manage levels of detail for components like the Cosmo compute sled and Sidecar switch, ensuring the interactive site runs smoothly across different devices. They also highlight the tool's potential for customer support and internal training, as well as its open-source nature, inviting community contributions via pull requests.

    Industrial & consumer product designEDA & CAD tools
    8 chapters

  • · 1h 28m

    The Hardest Kind of Unsafe Rust

    Rain Paharia, an engineer at Oxide Computer Company, joins Bryan Cantrill and Adam Leventhal to discuss the `iddqd` Rust crate, which allows keys to be borrowed from values in maps to avoid duplication. Paharia explains that implementing this efficiently requires 'unsafe Rust,' specifically dealing with the 'hardest kind' where the library must remain sound even when user-provided code behaves pathologically or incorrectly. The conversation details how Paharia used property-based testing, Miri, and LLMs to find and fix bugs related to mutable aliasing and panic safety in the crate. The discussion highlights the rigorous responsibility required when writing unsafe code that interacts with untrusted or buggy safe code.

    Embedded firmwareDebugging & failure analysis
    10 chapters

  • · 1h 18m

    This Old Repo: LLMs and the Restoration of BattleTris

    Bryan Cantrill and Adam Leventhal discuss using LLMs, specifically Claude, to restore BattleTris, a networked Tetris clone Bryan developed in 1993. They detail the process of getting the legacy C++ code to compile and run on modern Linux, highlighting how the AI resolved complex dependency issues, stack corruption bugs, and Makefile inconsistencies that would have been difficult to debug manually. The conversation explores how LLMs change the calculus for maintaining old open-source software, reducing the uncertainty of revival and enabling the restoration of projects like BattleTris that have fallen into disrepair due to changing implicit assumptions and deprecated libraries like Motif.

    AI & machine learningEmbedded firmware
    8 chapters

Every episode

188 episodes with a summary and chapters, by year.

202621 episodes
  1. 16 SeptFor Want of a Resistor1h 23m
  2. 11 SeptEmulating Oxide: How Faux Can You Go?1h 24m
  3. 3 SeptAI Detection with Max Spero1h 01m
  4. 25 AugThe Return to the Chamber of Mysteries1h 16m
  5. 31 JulThe Open Weight Revolution with Simon Willison1h 24m
  6. 23 JulThe Past, Present, and Future of Digital Storytelling with Ramy Katrib1h 04m
  7. 27 JunThe Oxide 3D Explorer1h 14m
  8. 13 JunThe Hardest Kind of Unsafe Rust1h 28m
  9. 9 JunThis Old Repo: LLMs and the Restoration of BattleTris1h 18m
  10. 27 MayRooting for the Home Team with Paul Freedman and Bryan Carmel1h 02m
  11. 16 MayThe Tale of Reverso1h 06m
  12. 10 MayAI in Computer Science Education1h 29m
  13. 7 MayMechanical Engineering at Oxide [chapter images]1h 24m
  14. 3 MayAre LLMs Insufficently Lazy?1h 31m
  15. 4 AprBuilding a Quorum of Trust in the Oxide Rack1h 26m
  16. 18 MarWhen Nine Nines Isn't Enough1h 24m
  17. 27 FebOxide's $200M Series C1h 45m
  18. 12 FebShell Game with Evan Ratliff1h 23m
  19. 7 FebSoftware Engineering Past, Present, and Future with Grady Booch54m
  20. 15 JanEngineering Rigor in the LLM Age1h 32m
  21. 8 JanPredictions 2026!!1h 39m
202535 episodes
  1. 21 DecOxF 2025 Wrap-Up1h 27m
  2. 8 DecDeath by Uptime1h 00m
  3. 26 NovGrown-up ZFS Data Corruption Bug1h 21m
  4. 22 NovFounder vs. Investor with Liz Zalman and Jerry Neumann1h 28m
  5. 7 NovFuturelock1h 37m
  6. 31 OctBooks in the Box V1h 20m
  7. 17 OctAI in Higher Education with Michael Littman1h 20m
  8. 25 SeptSystems Software in the Large1h 44m
  9. 19 SeptScaling Manufacturing1h 30m
  10. 18 SeptTechnological Revolutions with Jerry Neumann1h 25m
  11. 15 AugThe Promises of Tech with Scott Hanselman1h 26m
  12. 9 AugOxide's $100M Series B1h 32m
  13. 10 JulAdventures in Data Corruption1h 43m
  14. 27 JunWhen Async Attacks!1h 53m
  15. 19 JunDiving In with Robert Bogart1h 43m
  16. 16 JunDebugger-Driven Development1h 34m
  17. 5 JunAI Discourse with Steve Klabnik1h 34m
  18. 24 MayAI, Materials, and Fraud with Ben Shindel1h 10m
  19. 15 MayRIP USENIX ATC1h 24m
  20. 7 MaySolutions Software Engineering with Matthew Sanabria1h 31m
  21. 1 MayShootout at the CNCF Corral1h 23m
  22. 24 AprBringing up Cosmo1h 55m
  23. 17 AprCharacter Limit with Kate Conger and Ryan Mac1h 27m
  24. 4 AprHell is other networks1h 27m
  25. 1 AprRaiding the Minibar1h 52m
  26. 21 MarLip-Bu Tan's Intel1h 22m
  27. 15 MarA Happy Day For Rust1h 20m
  28. 6 MarA Crate is Born1h 43m
  29. 28 FebTransparency in Hardware/Software Interfaces1h 48m
  30. 24 FebA Half-Century of Silicon Valley with Randy Shoup1h 57m
  31. 13 FebTextual UIs with Orhun Parmaksız1h 32m
  32. 6 FebAI Disruption: DeepSeek and Cerebras1h 31m
  33. 23 JanHolistic Engineering with Robert Mustacchi1h 50m
  34. 16 JanCrates We Love1h 33m
  35. 10 JanPredictions 20252h 01m
202433 episodes
  1. 30 DecOxF 2024 Wrap-Up1h 33m
  2. 19 DecScaling Bluesky with Paul Frazee1h 40m
  3. 14 DecConferences in Tech1h 30m
  4. 5 DecIntel after Gelsinger1h 50m
  5. 21 NovTechnical Blogging1h 40m
  6. 1 NovBooks in the Box IV1h 34m
  7. 16 OctUnshrouding Turin (or Benvenuto a Torino)1h 53m
  8. 2 OctQuerying Metrics with OxQL1h 35m
  9. 26 SeptRTO or GTFO1h 39m
  10. 20 SeptReflecting on Founder Mode1h 22m
  11. 30 AugRFDs: The Backbone of Oxide1h 42m
  12. 21 AugWhither CockroachDB?1h 34m
  13. 14 AugThe Saga of Sagas1h 57m
  14. 9 AugPragmatic LLM usage with Nicholas Carlini1h 33m
  15. 25 JulCrowdStrike BSOD Fiasco with Katie Moussouris1h 41m
  16. 18 JulHeterogeneous Computing with Raja Koduri1h 54m
  17. 11 JulInnovation Tokens with Charity Majors1h 26m
  18. 27 JunIs NVIDIA like Sun from the Dot Com Bubble?1h 28m
  19. 17 JunMusing with Changelog's Adam Stacoviak1h 46m
  20. 30 MayRebooting a datacenter: A decade later1h 40m
  21. 22 MayBookclub: How Life Works by Philip Ball1h 50m
  22. 25 AprAll we have to fear is FUD itself1h 21m
  23. 17 AprA Baseball Startup with Paul Freedman and Bryan Carmel1h 13m
  24. 10 AprDiscovering the XZ Backdoor with Andres Freund1h 37m
  25. 3 AprCultural Idiosyncrasies1h 27m
  26. 27 MarAdversarial Machine Learning1h 23m
  27. 15 MarData Visualization1h 25m
  28. 14 FebCrucible: The Oxide Storage Service1h 38m
  29. 7 FebInnovation Stagnation?1h 00m
  30. 1 FebHelios1h 47m
  31. 24 JanWhat's taking so long?!1h 35m
  32. 17 JanOpen Source LLMs with Simon Willison1h 33m
  33. 10 JanPredictions 2024!1h 56m
202334 episodes
  1. 12 DecAMD's MI300 and the Future of Accelerated Compute1h 14m
  2. 5 DecFramework Computer with Nirav Patel1h 07m
  3. 28 NovOpenAI's Boardroom Brawl1h 10m
  4. 7 NovHiring Processes with Gergely Orosz1h 45m
  5. 31 OctLaunching the Cloud Computer1h 34m
  6. 24 OctOpen Source and Capitalism with Ashley Williams and Adam Jacob1h 39m
  7. 17 OctSettling Beef1h 39m
  8. 3 OctMr. Nagle's Wild Ride1h 30m
  9. 12 SeptDTrace at 202h 04m
  10. 29 AugOpen Source Anti-Patterns with Kelsey Hightower1h 38m
  11. 22 AugFork in the road for Terraform?1h 20m
  12. 15 AugNo Silver Bullets1h 17m
  13. 25 JulBooks in the Box III1h 30m
  14. 18 JulThe Frontend of the Computer1h 03m
  15. 11 JulTales from Manufacturing: Shipping Rack 11h 24m
  16. 4 JulShipping the first Oxide rack: Your questions answered!2h 02m
  17. 27 JunOkay, Doomer: A Rebuttal to AI Doom-mongering1h 11m
  18. 20 JunSoftware Verificationpalooza1h 21m
  19. 13 JunVirtualizing Time1h 05m
  20. 30 MayOpen Source Governance1h 25m
  21. 16 MayBuilding Together: Oxide and Samtec1h 20m
  22. 9 MayThe Network Behind the Network1h 39m
  23. 2 MayBlue Skies Over Mastodon (with Erin Kissane and Tim Bray)1h 41m
  24. 18 AprRust Trademark: Argle-bargle or Foofaraw?1h 22m
  25. 4 AprCabling the Backplane1h 00m
  26. 28 MarGet You a State Machine for Great Good1h 08m
  27. 21 MarDoes a GPT future need software engineers?1h 39m
  28. 17 MarOn Silicon Valley Bank with Eric Vishria59m
  29. 28 FebRack-scale Networking1h 34m
  30. 14 FebMemory Safety with Yael Grauer1h 17m
  31. 7 FebOxide and the Chamber of Mysteries1h 40m
  32. 24 JanRevisiting Unikernels1h 23m
  33. 17 JanThe Power of Proto Boards!1h 41m
  34. 10 JanPredictions 2023!1h 37m
202239 episodes
  1. 27 DecBreaking it down with Ian Brown1h 25m
  2. 19 DecA Debugging Odyssey1h 35m
  3. 13 DecPodcasts for Podcast-Lovers1h 28m
  4. 29 NovLeaving Twitter with Tim Bray1h 12m
  5. 14 NovMastodon with Kris Nova1h 30m
  6. 8 NovTech Layoffs1h 39m
  7. 31 OctOpen Source Firmware1h 24m
  8. 28 OctLet That Sink In! (Whither Twitter?)1h 43m
  9. 25 OctOpen Source Inside Baseball (with Stephen O'Grady)1h 11m
  10. 11 OctHolistic Boot1h 31m
  11. 4 OctEngineering Incentives... and Misincentives1h 05m
  12. 27 SeptLosing the Signal with Sean Silcoff1h 08m
  13. 13 SeptThreads, async/await, Promises, Futures1h 15m
  14. 6 SeptPotpourri: Product, Platform, Paravirtualization1h 49m
  15. 30 AugThe Oxide Supply Chain1h 09m
  16. 23 AugBringup Lab Chronicles: A Measurement Two Years in the Making1h 34m
  17. 16 AugSurviving Conventional Wisdom1h 21m
  18. 9 AugRIP Optane1h 43m
  19. 2 AugDeep Tech Investing1h 15m
  20. 19 JulAcross the Chasm with Rust1h 44m
  21. 12 JulIntegrating Hardware and Software Teams1h 43m
  22. 28 JunBooks in the box redux1h 43m
  23. 21 JunPaths into Systems Programming1h 47m
  24. 14 JunThe Rise and Fall of DEC1h 51m
  25. 24 MaySurviving the Dot-Com Bust1h 31m
  26. 17 MayDebugging Methodologies1h 30m
  27. 26 AprFail Whaling1h 42m
  28. 19 AprMore Tales from the Bringup Lab2h 07m
  29. 5 AprAnother LPC55 ROM Vulnerability1h 21m
  30. 29 MarTime, Timezones, Metric Time, Losing and Saving1h 05m
  31. 22 MarTrolltron, Assemble!1h 10m
  32. 15 MarUkraine1h 25m
  33. 8 MarThe Future Of Work1h 57m
  34. 22 FebEngineering Culture1h 44m
  35. 15 FebBreakthroughs Delayed1h 08m
  36. 8 FebI Know This! (Purpose-built systems with general-purpose guts)1h 20m
  37. 25 JanTaxonomy of Hype1h 22m
  38. 11 JanFlying Blind with Peter Robison1h 29m
  39. 4 JanPredictions 20222h 06m
202126 episodes
  1. 14 DecThe Pragmatism of Hubris2h 03m
  2. 7 DecTales from the Bringup Lab1h 42m
  3. 30 NovThe Sidecar Switch1h 14m
  4. 23 NovTalking Turkeys1h 18m
  5. 16 NovThe Wrath of Kahn59m
  6. 9 NovSupercomputers, Cray, and How Sun Picked SGI's Pocket1h 31m
  7. 2 NovOn Code Review1h 30m
  8. 26 OctCoder's Block1h 20m
  9. 19 OctDijkstra's Tweetstorm1h 26m
  10. 5 OctEconomics and Open Source1h 39m
  11. 28 SeptThe Books in the Box1h 17m
  12. 21 SeptTheranos, Silicon Valley, and the March Madness of Tech Fraud1h 12m
  13. 14 SeptDocker, Inc., an Early Epitaph1h 11m
  14. 7 SeptPut the OS back in OSDI1h 12m
  15. 31 AugA brief history of talking computers1h 33m
  16. 24 AugThe episode formerly known as ℔1h 06m
  17. 17 AugThe Showstopper Show1h 26m
  18. 27 JulAgile + 201h 11m
  19. 6 JulNeXT, Objective-C, and contrasting histories1h 11m
  20. 22 JunWhat's a bug? What's a debugger?1h 06m
  21. 8 JunBarracuda 7200.11: broken firmware is broken software!57m
  22. 1 JunSilicon Cowboys1h 06m
  23. 25 Mayfrom /proc to proc_macro1h 05m
  24. 18 Maygolang asserts and the PLATO terminal29m
  25. 11 MayA Requiem for SPARC with Tom Lyon1h 32m
  26. 4 MayMr. Leventhal, Come here I want to see you31m

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