Some discussion of Facebook's open compute project: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GqnA3YIRSHs#t=1341
(that's at time offset 22:21. The time offset links work in Chrome, but don't seem to in Firefox.) which is Facebook's attempt to build an open and standardized hardware platform. Facebook says they saved $1.2B in the past 2 years as a result of this approach to their server hardware. Facebook estimates that less than 20% of the intellectual property comes from Facebook now. (They thought they'd be the ones driving the initiative for a long time.) They've had buy-in from Microsoft, Rackspace, Fidelity, and lots of other major users of data center server hardware. These servers incorporate a "group hug" slot that lets you swap CPUs from any vendor - AMD, Intel, ARM - onto a standard motherboard. (I haven't investigated, but I'm guessing it is a PCB with a subset of components, likely including RAM.) The video clip had more details, and the written articles published last week (such as in http://gigaom.com/) yet more. It seems likely that the open compute project represents the largest open hardware project, measured either in volume of units produced or money spent. -Tom _______________________________________________ Hardwarehacking mailing list [email protected] http://lists.blu.org/mailman/listinfo/hardwarehacking
