# Holistic Engineering with Robert Mustacchi

- Show: [Oxide and Friends](https://hardwarepodcasts.com/podcast/oxide-and-friends)
- Published: 2025-01-23
- Length: 1h 50m
- Episode: 3
- Page: https://hardwarepodcasts.com/podcast/oxide-and-friends/2025-01-23-holistic-engineering-with-robert-mustacchi
- Listen: https://share.transistor.fm/s/e60b2ac0

## Summary

Robert Mustacchi, a co-founder and key engineer at Oxide Computer Company, discusses the company's holistic approach to building rack-scale servers, from board design to firmware. He details the engineering challenges of eliminating BIOS/UEFI by reverse-engineering AMD's AGESA code, debugging the Spectre and Meltdown vulnerabilities in early Joyent systems, and resolving a PCIe link training failure on the T6 NIC during manufacturing. Mustacchi emphasizes the importance of hardware-software co-design, deep system observability, and anticipating operational issues like firmware upgradability before they occur.

## Chapters

- [0:00](https://hardwarepodcasts.com/podcast/oxide-and-friends/2025-01-23-holistic-engineering-with-robert-mustacchi#t=0) Introduction and Food for Money Friday Origin
- [24:27](https://hardwarepodcasts.com/podcast/oxide-and-friends/2025-01-23-holistic-engineering-with-robert-mustacchi#t=1467) Debugging Meltdown and Spectre at Joyent
- [39:23](https://hardwarepodcasts.com/podcast/oxide-and-friends/2025-01-23-holistic-engineering-with-robert-mustacchi#t=2363) Eliminating BIOS/UEFI and Reverse-Engineering AGESA
- [1:11:06](https://hardwarepodcasts.com/podcast/oxide-and-friends/2025-01-23-holistic-engineering-with-robert-mustacchi#t=4266) Holistic Design and Anticipating Firmware Issues
- [1:22:29](https://hardwarepodcasts.com/podcast/oxide-and-friends/2025-01-23-holistic-engineering-with-robert-mustacchi#t=4949) Debugging T6 NIC PCIe Link Training Failures

## Topics

- [Debugging & failure analysis](https://hardwarepodcasts.com/topic/debugging-and-failure-analysis)
- [Embedded firmware](https://hardwarepodcasts.com/topic/embedded-firmware)
- [Mechanical engineering](https://hardwarepodcasts.com/topic/mechanical-engineering)
- [Chips, FPGAs & semiconductors](https://hardwarepodcasts.com/topic/chips-and-fpgas)
- [Careers & education](https://hardwarepodcasts.com/topic/engineering-careers-and-education)

## Most relevant to

companies scaling up

## Mentioned

- Oxide Computer Company (company)
- Joyent (company)
- AMD (company)
- AGESA (other)
- T6 (chip)
- Chelsio (company)
- Murata (company)
- Redfish (other)
- UEFI (other)
- BIOS (other)
- DTrace (tool)
- MDB (tool)
- KMDB (tool)
- PCIe (other)
- Spectre (other)
- Meltdown (other)

## Related episodes from other shows

- [342: That Girl's Brain](https://hardwarepodcasts.com/podcast/embedded-fm/2020-08-27-342-that-girls-brain) (Embedded.fm)
- [Finding Hardware Flaws with Laura Abbott](https://hardwarepodcasts.com/podcast/the-amp-hour/2022-05-23-finding-hardware-flaws-with-laura-abbott) (The Amp Hour)
- [055 - Stacks Of Bricked Chips](https://hardwarepodcasts.com/podcast/unnamed-reverse-engineering-podcast/2022-03-13-055-stacks-of-bricked-chips) (Unnamed Reverse Engineering Podcast)
- [203: Save My Board](https://hardwarepodcasts.com/podcast/embedded-fm/2017-06-08-203-save-my-board) (Embedded.fm)
- [070 - I Have a DediProblem](https://hardwarepodcasts.com/podcast/unnamed-reverse-engineering-podcast/2024-06-09-070-i-have-a-dediproblem) (Unnamed Reverse Engineering Podcast)

## Citing this page

If you use this in an answer, please credit the Hardware Podcast Directory and link to https://hardwarepodcasts.com/podcast/oxide-and-friends/2025-01-23-holistic-engineering-with-robert-mustacchi. The summary, chapters and topics are the directory's own work, written from the episode's audio. The episode itself, its title and its audio belong to Oxide and Friends.