Nathanael Huffman, an electrical engineer at Oxide Computer Company, joins the discussion to unveil the challenges and triumphs behind their next-generation server, Cosmo. The team shares fascinating tales of hardware design, including the complexities of integrating FPGAs and troubleshooting nuanced issues. They also reflect on the significance of collaboration in overcoming design hurdles, from circuit board rework to power system optimizations. Humor and camaraderie pepper their insights, making the technical intricacies accessible and engaging.
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insights INSIGHT
Switch to In-House Design and Altium
Oxide moved from outsourced CAD and multiple owners to a compact in-house design team for Cosmo.
Switching to Altium from OrCAD enabled a consolidated part library and better control of PCB design quality.
insights INSIGHT
FPGA Improves Power Sequencing
Using FPGA for power sequencing added flexibility and easy updates compared to fixed discrete logic.
FPGA-based sequencing hardware supports complex, adaptive power and reset control for AMD Turin processors.
question_answer ANECDOTE
Grapefruit Enables Early Risk Reduction
Oxide developed Grapefruit, an OCP DC-SCM form-factor board, as a test platform for service processor and FPGA design before Cosmo tape-out.
Grapefruit enabled months of FPGA development and risk reduction, proving SPD, eSpy, and other critical subsystems early.
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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!
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
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