Google joins the Open Compute Project

Internet giant Google announced it has joined 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 saves up to 30% energy, and a new form factor for server racks.

As the Internet grew, the number of data centers multiplied, and their design became more complicated. By 2011, the largest companies and Internet projects, such as Google, Amazon and Microsoft, had their own developments to improve the efficiency of their data centers. They ordered the hardware developed "for themselves" directly from manufacturers, not relying on standard solutions from Dell, HP and IBM.

The device of data centers was kept secret, since it was one of the competitive advantages. The "first rule of the fighting club" was in effect. But then Facebook suddenly with a firm hand tore the cover from mystery, and founded the non-profit Open Compute Project, publishing a large number of specifications for arranging server rooms.

The idea of ​​Facebook was that the largest companies exchange information on arranging data centers with each other, which should ultimately lead to economies of scale and the cost of creating them. And it went. Microsoft, HP, Quanta, and even such a closed company as Apple joined the project. Business giants like Rackspace and Goldman Sachs have begun using OCP hardware to expand their operations.

Only giants from the giants - Google and Amazon - were left aside. But now Google could not stand it and joined the project with its extensive developments. In particular, the developments are designed to increase the possibilities of using server GPU processors, which are very well suited for projects on artificial intelligence.

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

From participating in the OCP project, Google hopes to both benefit from economies of scale and bring closer its long-standing goal of conquering the cloud services market , displacing it from its current leader, Amazon.