Open Compute Project Hosts Hackathon

OCP Summit

The folks at Open Compute Project are running their annual summit in January, but this year they’ll be adding a hardware hackathon to the program. The hackathon’s goal is to build open source hardware that can be applied to data centers to increase efficiency and reduce costs.

The Open Compute Project (OCP) is a foundation that develops open hardware for data centers. This includes power supplies, motherboards, and storage disk arrays. The project started up at Facebook, but it’s now an independent foundation.

The hackathon will take place over the two day summit on January 16th and 17th, 2013 in Santa Clara. The registration is now open, and it’s free but limited to the first 100 people.

The hackathon is being put on with collaboration from Upverter, Github, and GrabCAD, who will be providing tools for the event. If you’re in the Santa Clara area and looking to do some hacking early in the new year, you might want to check this out.

6 thoughts on “Open Compute Project Hosts Hackathon

  1. there is nothing open about Open Compute. they dont release schematics, layouts or anything. also they claim efficiency but they use x86_64 processors when ARM chips would be muuuuch more efficient. why? look at who backs the project, they are all large corporations that clearly have their own proprietary x86 software they need to run.

    this project is a farce.

    1. Blame Intel and AMD for requiring you to sign strict NDAs before getting any meaningful hardware documentation or platform design info. That’s why Open Compute releases only specifications and not complete designs.

      That said I’d be interested to see how many independent hackers are interested in participating. The contest sounds like a manifestation of the misguided belief that making something open source means that people will do your R&D for free.

        1. Still lots of software that doesn’t run on the ARM platform.
          It’s also downright a different beast compared to x86.
          So please contain your wannabe RMS attitude.

          That said, I don’t have a optimistic view on this, but that’s because Facebook’s way of operating.
          They’re border-lining to Apple in that aspect.

          1. Their own site reads, “goal: to build one of the most efficient computing infrastructures at the lowest possible cost”

            However, ARM chips are far lower power and cost less. Saying Intel/AMD chip are lower power and cost less is a flat out lie.

            “We decided to honor our hacker roots and challenge convention by custom designing and building our software, servers and data centers from the ground up”

            There goes your software compatibility argument.

            To further invalidate your argument, please list some non-proprietary software that wont recompile for an ARM CPU target that are for use on datacenter machines.

            Finally, how is ARM a “downright different beast”? Unless you are coding in assembly, you just recompile and you are done.

            People can make their own stuff but to call it “open” is diliberately misleading. Considering who is working on it, I’m not surprised in the least.

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