Grey Beards on Systems 157: GreyBeards talk commercial cloud computer with Bryan Cantrill, CTO, Oxide Computer
Nov 21, 2023
Bryan Cantrill, CTO of Oxide Computer, talks about their bet on rack scale computing, their own designed rack and sleds, and their OS Helios. They provide EC2-like compute and EBS-like storage with API driven software and no software licensing fees.
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Tiny OS Runs Critical Hardware Control
- The custom microcontroller OS "hubris" runs in very small memory (8K SRAM, 64K ROM) with multi-tasking.
- This microcontroller handles critical low-level functions, eliminating complexity from general-purpose BMCs.
Replacing BIOS with Helios OS
- Oxide replaced UEFI and legacy BIOS with Helios, a Rust-based hypervisor and OS for lowest-level platform enablement.
- This unified OS manages the entire host CPU from earliest boot through VM management.
ZFS and Crucible for Storage Reliability
- Oxide uses ZFS per drive for end-to-end checksum and snapshots within a three-way mirrored storage service called Crucible.
- This architecture balances high performance with reliability and self-configuration for rapid rack deployment.