Oxide and Friends · 7 Feb 2023 · 1h 40m · Episode 4
Bryan Cantrill, Adam Leventhal, and the Oxide Computer Company team (Eric Aasen, Nathanael Huffman, Robert Keith, Arjen Roodselaar, Josh Clulow, CJ Mendez) detail their journey through EMC and safety compliance for their rack-scale computer. They discuss the challenges of pre-compliance testing in Texas, debugging a critical component mismatch in the 'shark fin' drive connectors, and surviving a catastrophic power-on failure that destroyed 14 FPGAs. The team ultimately passes FCC certification with minimal margin after addressing antenna effects in the rear doors and implementing spread spectrum clocking.
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Monk Eastman, an experienced compliance engineer, explains the maze of hardware certifications including FCC, CE, UL, and UN 38. He details the specific costs, testing procedures, and strategic advice for embedded engineers to navigate these requirements efficiently. The discussion covers the history of standards bodies, the importance of pre-scanning for EMC, and the rigorous nature of battery safety testing.
Jessie Frazelle, Co-Founder and Chief Product Officer at Oxide Computer, explains how the company builds open-source, rack-scale servers for enterprises by adopting hyperscaler-style hardware design. She details the decision to open-source firmware and hardware to eliminate vendor finger-pointing and security vulnerabilities inherent in proprietary BMCs. The discussion covers their use of Rust for firmware and control plane software, power efficiency metrics like PUE, and the challenges of deploying high-density compute in traditional colocation environments.
Steven Hoss and Lucy Trey Park of Opulo discuss the complex and expensive process of obtaining FCC and CE certifications for the Lumen PMP V4 3D printer. They detail the four main categories of EMC testing—radiated/conducted emissions and immunity—and explain how using pre-certified power supplies and open-source community feedback helped them pass on the first try. The hosts also share practical advice on budgeting, the importance of consulting certification houses early, and the specific marking requirements for different markets.
Dave Jones and Chris Gammell discuss a Keysight U1272A multimeter that suffers from severe susceptibility to conducted and radiated EM fields, a flaw inherent to its design that bypassed standard compliance testing. They also examine the Allwinner R8 processor and the new Chip Pro module, noting how the latter's System-on-Module design with integrated DDR3 makes previously inaccessible consumer chips viable for small-batch production. Finally, they critique the Wi-Fi kettle's usability failures and Solar Roadways' non-functional public installation, attributing these to marketing-driven product decisions rather than engineering value.
Karen Burnham, chief engineer and founder of EMC United, explains why 60-90% of electronics fail EMC tests on the first attempt, citing counterintuitive antenna effects and misleading data sheet advice like ground plane splits. She details how requirements management is often mishandled, leading to over-specification, and discusses the limitations of current EMC simulation tools in predicting system-level behavior. Burnham advocates for early design reviews and low-cost pre-compliance tools like the TinySA to avoid costly respins, while noting that AI's role in EMC is currently limited by a lack of proprietary, correlated datasets.
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