Potpourri: Product, Platform, Paravirtualization

Oxide and Friends · 6 Sept 2022 · 1h 49m · Episode 26

What this episode covers

Brian, Adam, Josh, Rick, and other Oxide Computer Company founders discuss the architectural decisions behind building a rack-scale computer from the board up, including the choice to integrate a custom P4-based switch and use a cable backplane to avoid the pitfalls of commodity networking. They recount technical challenges such as the NCSI protocol's security flaws, the decision to abandon the Tock OS in favor of Hubris, and the complexities of managing distributed block storage and live VM migration. The conversation also covers their approach to open source, specifically the values mismatch with OpenTitan, and the product management philosophy of solving acute pain points before building tooling.

Mentioned

Companies
Oxide Computer Company, Joyent, RIM, Quanta
Products
Amazon EBS, OpenTitan, Ceph, OpenStack
Chips
P4
Also
Tock, Hubris

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The summary, chapters and topics are generated from the episode’s audio by this directory, not written by Oxide and Friends. The episode itself belongs to its publisher.