Google joins Open Compute Project

Internet giant Google announced joining the Open Compute Project to participate in the standardization of IT infrastructure. The company's participation will begin with a new 48 V power supply specification , which allows saving up to 30% of energy, and a new form factor for server racks.



As the Internet grew, the number of data centers multiplied and their device became more complex. By 2011, the largest companies and Internet projects, such as Google, Amazon and Microsoft, had their own work to improve the efficiency of their data centers. They ordered the custom-made hardware directly from the manufacturers, without relying on standard solutions from Dell, HP and IBM.

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The device data centers were kept secret, because it was one of the competitive advantages. There was "the first rule of the fight club". But then Facebook suddenly broke the cover of mystery with a firm hand, and founded the non-commercial project Open Compute Project, publishing a large number of specifications for arranging server rooms.



Facebook's idea was for the largest companies to exchange information on the arrangement of data centers with each other, which ultimately should lead to economies of scale and cheaper creation. And it went. Microsoft, HP, Quanta, and even such a closed company as Apple joined the project. Business giants like Rackspace and Goldman Sachs began using OCP hardware to expand their operations.



Only giants from giants, Google and Amazon, remained on the sidelines. But now Google couldn’t stand it and joined the project with its extensive developments. In particular, developments are designed to increase the use of server GPU-processors, which are very well suited for projects on artificial intelligence.



It is with such projects that they are seriously interested in both Google and Facebook - the latter has just just opened the specifications of the GPU servers that underlie their neural networks.



From participation in the OCP project, Google hopes to win both on economies of scale and to bring its long-standing goal closer - to conquer the cloud services market by squeezing the current leader, Amazon.