[goldinfra]

Coupling vs Decoupling is not some one-sided thing. It's a major trade-off.

One of the most obvious examples of the problem with this approach is that they're shipping previous generation servers on Day 1. One can easily buy current generation AMD servers from a number of vendors.

They will also likely charge a significant premium over decoupled vendors that are forced to compete head-to-head for a specific role (server vendor, switch vendor, etc).

Their coupling approach will most likely leave them perpetually behind and more expensive.

But there are advantages too. Their stuff should be simpler to use and require less in-house expertise to operate well.

This is probably a reasonable trade-off for government agencies and the like, but will probably never be ideal for more savvy customers.

And I don't know how truly open source their work is but if it's truly open source, they'll most likely find themselves turned into a software company with an open core model. Other vendors that are already at scale can almost certainly assemble hardware better than they can.

[xp84]

> will probably never be ideal for more savvy customers

IDK about every use case, but slightly older generations of CPUs would affect me roughly zero. I'm sure there are things so compute-intensive that one would care very much, but a lot of people probably wouldn't bat an eye about that, and not because they're unsavvy.

To the extent that these things are supported as a whole by the vendor rather than a bunch of finger pointing though, that could be massive, specifically in terms of how many staff members you could "not hire" compared to if you had to employ someone to both build and continually maintain it.

I'm posting this not to invalidate what you're saying, just to say that a little predictable upfront amount of money (the premium) will be spent very happily by lots of people who value predictability and TCO over initial price.

[SoftTalker]

Indeed, I'm still using a cluster of Haswell processors to run VMs for appropriate workloads and it's all fine.

[goldinfra]

If you're not rapidly scaling it probably doesn't matter. But if you're still buying (and maybe even using) Haswell CPUs in 2023, you may be missing out in a big way.

A moderately large Haswell cluster is equivalent in power to a moderately powerful modern server.

[SoftTalker]

No not buying new, just using what was bought years ago. It still works, it does the job. Is it the best performance per watt, clearly no but the budget for electricity and the budget for new capital expenses are two different things.

[seabrookmx]

If you go on Google cloud and select an E2 instance type (atleast in `us-central1` where my company runs most of it's infra) you'll usually get Broadwell chips.

[geraldhh]

replacing when and if energy, resources and effort required to run it surpass those required to replace it is efficient

[dangoor]

> They will also likely charge a significant premium over decoupled vendors

It seems like they're trying to hit a middle ground between cloud vendors and fully decoupled server equipment companies.

Using Oxide is likely cheaper over the life of the hardware than using a cloud vendor. A company who already has in-house expertise on running racks of systems may be less the target market here than people who want to do cloud computing but under their own control.

[sangnoir]

> A company who already has in-house expertise on running racks of systems may be less the target market here than people who want to do cloud computing but under their own control.

True, but Oxide may find themselves competing against Dell or HP if they adopt Oxides software for their respective servers. Additionally, Oxide may find itself competing against consultants and vendors in specialized verticals (e.g. core Banking software + Oracle DB + COTS servers + Oxide software). Oxide, and their competitors are going for people who used to buy racks of Sun hardware.

[ahhfgsado6698]

HP and Dell would have to fundamentally change the way they design hardware and software to be that kind of threat, and if that ever happens I think I would be pretty okay with that outcome.

[mlindner]

> One of the most obvious examples of the problem with this approach is that they're shipping previous generation servers on Day 1. One can easily buy current generation AMD servers from a number of vendors.

> Their coupling approach will most likely leave them perpetually behind

This is a startup that took years to get their initial hardware developed. The time between this version and the version using the next version of AMD chips will be shorter than the time it took to develop this product. This is not an inherent issue with coupling vs decoupling.

Also, most servers are rarely running on the most recent cpus anyway. At least in companies I've worked at with on-site hardware they're usually years (sometimes even a decade) out of date getting the last life sucked out of them before too many internal users start complaining and they get replaced.

[goldinfra]

Coupling requires more integration work, including writing and testing custom firmware. Oxide will be a tiny market player for a long time, even if things go very well. Are AMD and Broadcom really going to spend as much time helping Oxide as they do helping Dell? Of course not, Oxide's order volume will be a rounding error.

I'm sure they'll improve their processes over time but the lag will probably always be a non-zero value. Hopefully they'll be able to keep it low enough that it's not an important factor but as a customer it's certainly something one should consider.

It would be surprising if they don't run into some nasty issue that leaves their customers 6+ months behind on servers or switches at some point.

[mlindner]

From listening to their talks they've actually gotten pretty good direct responses from AMD and AMD likes them quite a bit. They've done what no other system integrator has done and brought up the CPU without using AMD's AGESA firmware bootloader. By simplifying the system they've reduced the workload on what they need to handle.

The talk here talks about that from about 32:15 : https://www.osfc.io/2022/talks/i-have-come-to-bury-the-bios-...

As to your second point, unless AMD somehow becomes supply constrained and only wants to ship to their most important customers first I don't see a future where there would be any lag. Again, the delay this time is from how long it took from company start until product release. Future delays will be based on the time it takes from them getting early development parts to released products, which they could even possibly beat Dell to market on given the smaller company size and IMO more skilled employees.

> It would be surprising if they don't run into some nasty issue that leaves their customers 6+ months behind on servers or switches at some point.

I mean they've already hit tons of nasty issues, for example finding two zero-day vulnerabilities in their chosen security processor. They've shown they can work around issues pretty well.

[DrScientist]

> it would be surprising if they don't run into some nasty issue that leaves their customers 6+ months behind on servers or switches at some point.

I just think your premise is wrong - most customers don't care about not having the absolute latest and greatest. Indeed they will often avoid them because

1. They are new so more likely to have as yet undiscovered issues ( hardware or drivers ).

2. If you buy top end, they sell at a premium well above their performance premium.

ie the customers who are perennially chasing the latest hardware are in the minority.

[goldinfra]

Most customers care about having the best of the available options. Rarely would any company deliberately choose to be behind where their competitors can be.

1. The way to run into undiscovered issues is to choose a completely custom firmware/hardware/software stack that almost no one else in the world is running.

2. Not sure where you're getting this from. There is almost always a price:performance calculation that results in current generation smashing the previous generation with server and switch hardware. Often this means not buying the flagship chips but still the current generation.

And a major reason to get off old generations of hardware is that they become unavailable relatively quickly. It's always easier to buy current generation hardware than previous generation hardware, especially a couple years into the current generation. This has nothing to do with chasing the latest hardware.

[DrScientist]

> And a major reason to get off old generations of hardware is that they become unavailable relatively quickly.

That's not in the customers interests per se- in fact it's a pain. Having control of their own stuff could mean they could offer a much longer effective operational life.

> The way to run into undiscovered issues is to choose a completely custom firmware/hardware/software stack that almost no one else in the world is running.

What breaks stuff is change - sure when they are starting up it's higher risk - but again if they can manage the lifecycle better, not have change for changes sake, then they could be much more reliable.

> Not sure where you're getting this from.

I was talking about not taking the flagship stuff - which is typically a few months ahead of the best price/performance stuff.

[lostdog]

If they standardize and open the server shape and plug interface then it gets really cool. Then I could go design a GPU server myself and add it to their rack. The rack is no longer a hyperconverged single-user proprietary setup and becomes something that can be extended and repurposed.

[foobarian]

"The Framework Cloud"