Oxide is bringing up its next generation server. To discuss the (amazingly smooth) bringup process, Bryan and Adam were joined by members of the oxide team. Tales of adversity, re-work, un-re-work, and triumph!

In addition to Bryan Cantrill and Adam Leventhal, we were joined by Oxide colleagues Nathanael Huffman, Ian Sobering, Matt Keeter, and Aaron Hartwig.

We mentioned quite a few terms! Here's a helpful guide:

• Cosmo - Oxide’s next-generation sled (currently in development) with an AMD Turin CPU
• Gimlet - Oxide’s current-generation sled with an AMD Milan CPU
• Turin - AMD Epyc 9005 Series
• Milan - AMD Epyc 7003 Series
• Genoa - AMD Epyc 9004 Series (Oxide chose to skip this generation)
• Sequencing - the precise control of when power rails are energized throughout a PCB
• Sled - One of the (max 32) computers in an Oxide rack; a custom form-factor optimized for power and cooling efficiency
• IBC - Intermediate Bus Converter (Our 54VDC -> 12VDC converter)
• RoT - Root of Trust
• SP - Service Processor, the small computer (running Hubris) that allows for low-level control
• Ignition - An even lower-level control network for power management (including power of the SP)
• Ruby - The AMD reference platform (Oxide has used this to prepare Cosmo software in advance of bringup)
• DC-SCM - https://www.opencompute.org/documents/ocp-dc-scm-spec-rev-1-0-pdf and OpenCompute standard form factor.
• Grapefruit - OCP DC-SCM form-factor board with our SP, RoT, and FPGA on it, used to replace the OCP DC-SCM baseboard management controller in the Ruby platform.
• Cadence - Software Oxide previously used for PCB design
• Altium - Software Oxide now uses for PCB design
• Hubris - Oxide’s embedded operating system, run on the SP and RoT
• Humility - The Hubris debugger
• PLM - Product Lifecycle Management – a class of software used for managing hardware BOMs
• BOM - Bill of Materials – the components required to build a hardware product
• RFK - Our colleague, Robert Keith (to distinguish him from our other colleague, Robert, and our former colleague, Keith)
• FPGA - Field Programmable Gate Array – Also referred to as “soft logic” – effectively programmable hardware
• ILA - Integrated Logic Analyzer
• JTAG - A debugging interface for various processors
• UART - A serial port or connection

For previous tales from the bringup lab:

• Tales from the bringup lab
• More tales from the bringup lab
• Bringup Lab Chronicles: A Measurement Two Years in the Making
• Raiding the Minibar

If we got something wrong or missed something, please file a PR! Our next show will likely be on Monday at 5p Pacific Time on our Discord server; stay tuned to our Mastodon feeds for details, or subscribe to this calendar. We'd love to have you join us, as we always love to hear from new speakers!