Project Olympus: Microsoft’s own open-source server equipment

The social network Facebook was one of the first to start developing open source hardware for data centers. This is beneficial for the company, since this type of equipment is cheaper to produce, operate and upgrade than proprietary servers and other systems. The beginning of work on the project Open Compute Project social network said in 2011. Since then, several other telecommunications giants have joined the project, including Microsoft.

In November, the Redmond company presented its own version of open hardware for servers, ready for 50%. To complete the project, Microsoft asked third-party professionals and enthusiasts. The project itself was named Project Olympus (also called the company's cloud server). As planned by the developers, the new equipment for the data center will meet a unified standard, and will ensure the work of everything and everything in Microsoft - from Azure to Office 365, Xbox and Bing.

The corporation wants to achieve not only the ability to customize equipment, customizing it to perform a specific task, but to get a single platform that would be compatible with various architectures, including X86 and ARM. The hardware of the Microsoft standard is hoping to persuade companies such as Intel and AMD to produce x86, Qualcomm and Cavium for ARM. And the sooner the vendors start working on the new program, the faster the project itself will be implemented.
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"Instead of our own team of specialists, which produces everything necessary for domestic needs, we agree with third-party manufacturers and develop an ecosystem of equipment and software, intending to offer new solutions to the market," said Kushagra Weide, a Microsoft representative.

The corporation, according to management, has already managed to appreciate all the advantages of open hardware developed and operated in the framework of the Open Compute project. Now about 90% of the equipment purchased by the company conforms to the OCP standard, including racks, elements of distribution power systems and other components. The purpose of using such equipment is to reduce the operating costs associated with a large and diverse "zoo" of server equipment. We are talking about the need to monitor the status of 10-20 types of server hardware, each of which requires a different method of operation and maintenance.





Standardization helped not only Microsoft, but also other companies to learn how to save money and time.

Project Olympus is the next step in the unification of equipment and the formation of a unified infrastructure of the data center. One of the key aspects is a universal power distribution system, which allows you to create data centers around the world, using approximately the same scheme, regardless of the local features of the power grid, be it 30 A or 50 A, 380 V, 415 or 480. Standard racks with the same elements can be installed in the data centers of Osborne, London, Beijing or Mumbai.

Now the Project Olympus project has already been completed by 80%, so Microsoft representatives are hoping that individual elements of the developed hardware can already be put into production. Unfortunately, in this regard, not too much is clear, since Microsoft maintains a certain degree of secrecy.



As far as you can understand, vendors such as

Qualcomm, Intel, Dell Technologies, Hewlett Packard Enterprise, Advanced Micro Devices, Samsung Electronics and other companies. Project Olympus, among other things, will be compatible with the hardware platform for AI projects developed by Nvidia.

Interestingly, now Microsoft is one of the largest buyers of server chips. If the company switches attention from the x86 architecture to ARM, Intel’s share of the server market, which is now about 99%, could be significantly reduced.