OEM Partnership Model for Technology Companies

 Open Compute Project

The need for lots of computing resources comes with a number of fundamental issues, the chief among which is likely going to be standardization. Without a consistent size, depth, or definition to the size of a server, a deployment can easily end up as a hodge-podge of malformed hardware with no discernable high-level design methodology. While the silicon vendors or the OEM partners building the systems could have their own way of doing things, without a collaborative effort to define standards, we would still be in the 1970s or 1980s where systems end up unique for one particular customer. On top of this, there is an important overriding drive in the 21st century to ensure that enterprise deployments are power efficient as well.

When Facebook was scaling its technologies and pivoting to completely public use in the late 2010s, it started an internal project around data efficiency and scalability. The goal was to end up with a solution that provided scalable resources, efficient compute, and enabled cost savings. In 2011, combined with Intel and Rackspace, the Open Compute Project was launched to enable a set of open standards that could benefit all major industry enterprise players. OCP is also a fluid organization, providing its community a structure that is designed to enable close collaboration on these evolving standards, pushing for 'commodity hardware that is more efficient, flexible and scalable, throwing off the shackles of proprietary one-size-fits-all gear'. OCP also has a certified partner program, allowing external customers to be part of the ecosystem that covers data center facilities, hardware, networking, open firmware, power, security, storage, telecommunications, and future technologies.

While the initial founders included Intel and Facebook, other companies involved include ASUS, Arm, IBM, Google, Microsoft, Dell, HPE, NVIDIA, Cisco, Lenovo, and Alibaba. An example of how to think about OCP is that an OCP Rack is 21 inches wide, rather than a standard 19 inches, allowing for more airflow, but the racks are also taller, accommodating more units.  Parts of the rack use dedicated high voltage power unit shelves that supply power to the rest of the servers in the rack, rather than relying on each system to have its own power supply. This also allows each server to fit more, such as a 2U six-blade design, or a 30 drive 2U design for storage that allows the drives to sit flat, rather than vertical. The OAM form factor for high-power graphics accelerators comes from the words (OCP Accelerator Module), coming out of the group. Two years ago we reported on Facebook's Zion Unified Training Platform, built to OCP specifications, using Intel's Cooper Lake processors.

In this interview today we have Rebecca Weekly, who not only sits as the VP and GM of Intel's Hyperscale and Strategy Execution but is also an Intel Senior Principal Engineer. However, today we are speaking to her in her role as Chairperson and President of the Board of the Open Compute Project, being promoted on July 1st of 2021. When the press relations team sent around the news that Rebecca was taking the role, I reached out and asked if we could interview to get a deeper insight into OCP.