Scaling Down While Scaling Up

Abstract This talk presents a detailed design study of several OCP hyperscale systems vs previous server & rack designs, including trade-offs & choices that reduce complexity, reduce costs, increase performance, and increase scalability. We will also quantify that a clear side-effect of these choices is to reduce the carbon footprint of data center deployments & operations. These carbon savings arise from both operational & scope 3 benefits, and they continue to accrue the longer systems are productively utilized. The power of collaborative, “out of the box” design approaches that have crossed traditional industry silos – across hardware, software, & operations – have enabled innovative designs that have proven their value and influence across the industry. The fact that these designs were pursued with simplicity and efficiency in mind mean that they also inherently consume less resources in both energy, materials, and operational effort paying dividends in the short-run and long-run.

Expected Learnings Talk attendees will learn about the details of several OCP server, storage & GPU designs that rethink the traditional data center server to provide clear benefits in reduced complexity, reduced costs, increased performance, & increased efficiency at scale. By reviewing a small subset of open hardware designs from the 10 year history of the Open Compute Project, we will outline the clear engineering trade-offs that were made, and the resulting gains in efficiency & scalable deployment. Attendees will also learn how these optimizations have direct benefits to the reduction of carbon footprints – both energy & materials consumption – when combined with modern data center infrastructure, deployment, & software architectures. The combination of creative hardware designs, software architectures, & operational approaches developed in wide industry collaborations with traditionally siloed teams and companies operating together have made these individual evolutions into a true revolution.