Google Joins Open Compute

Wired reports on Google joining Open Compute.  There is no word of this at OCP Summit.  Must be the big news that Jay Parikh will announce in 10 minutes.

http://www.wired.com/2016/03/google-facebook-designing-open-source-data-center-gear-together/

Happy to Share

Google’s Urs Hölzle—one of the company’s first employees and the engineer most responsible for what is probably the world’s largest and most advanced computer network—doesn’t see today’s announcement as a big change. He points out that Google has openly discussed its internal hardware designs in the past.

“I know that historically in the press, there has been a tendency to position it as Open Compute Project versus Google. But it has never been like that,” he says. “Over the past ten years, we have shared many, many things with the industry. This is the latest one.”

Google Deepmind AlphaGo wins 1st game vs champion, my son thinks it is so cool

My son last week asked what "Watson" was.  He had seen a Youtube video and he wanted to know what it was.

Instead of geeking out on trying to explain Watson like the above video I showed the Google DeepMind AlphaGo video that shows a specific application of compute power.

He then asked where is the computer that runs DeepMind.  DeepMind is in a data center like the one we drive by in The Dalles.

Google DeepMind AlphaGo just beat a Go Champion in the 1st of a 5 game match.

Google's AlphaGo AI defeats human in first game of Go contest
Machine takes 1-0 lead in historic five-game matchup between computer program developed by DeepMind and world’s best Go player Lee Sedol

Now my son wants to visit Google to see a data center.That's so cool.  On the other hand his older 14 yr old sister is not on the same page how cool a visit would be.  :-)  One of these days I may get my daughter interested in data centers.

2014 Google Date Center Video vs. Microsoft Data Center Video - Google has 20X the traffic

Out of curiosity I ran a YouTube search for Google Data Center and this video popped up.

In the list of results was a Microsoft Data Center video.

The Microsoft video has 105k views, published in Aug 2014.  The google video has 2,000k views published in Dec 2014.

The Microsoft video is 10 minutes long and comes off as a lecture on data center facts.  The Google video is 3 minutes long and tells the story of the brains behind the Internet which includes the people who work in the data centers.  The Microsoft video is more of a historical timeline with a range of facts that would have the interest of a small audience.  Microsoft did create a short version of the above video, but at 5 minutes I would still consider it too long for many and it has 40k views.

Microsoft did create a series of videos with people discussing the data centers, but the traffic has only one going over 1k after a year.

When you think about creating a Youtube video consider these two different approaches if you are interested in traffic.

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Human Behavior favors being close to your hardware - Infomart provides office space with IT space

I was chatting with a friend who is helping a client with data center space and he was amazed at how the final decisions of where to host equipment was driven by proximity to the operations staff.

One way to address this is to make it easier to put staff next to your equipment. Example in case is Infomart providing 25,000 sq ft of office space for 125 people in Hillsboro for a new tenant.

“Informart said the 25,000-square-foot commercial office space deal will bring 125 people to the mystery company’s existing IT operation.

The expansion brings the total employee count at the Infomart facility to roughly 200 people.
“Data centers are essential for modern economies,” said John Sheputis, president of Infomart Data Centers, in a written statement. “Mature IT operations move substantial amounts of IT equipment and information, both securely and with precision. These processes require more than raised floor, they require people.””

— http://www.bizjournals.com/portland/blog/techflash/2016/02/125-jobs-expected-from-hillsboro-data-center.html

Studying Logistics to Gain Insight - WSJ Logistics Report

From my early days studying Industrial Engineering and Operations Research at UC Berkeley I enjoyed the logistics and optimization. Why? I guess it was applied mathematics to real world problems. My dad was an engineer and I liked problem solving.

Logistics touches so many things in life. Things moving through space and time.

My daily read is WSJ's Logistics Report. http://www.wsj.com/news/logistics-report

Didn't know that Google has a patent for self-driving delivery trucks.

Google filed a patent for self-driving delivery trucks. (Quartz) http://qz.com/613277/google-wants-to-deliver-packages-from-self-driving-trucks/

A new patent awarded to Google today suggests that the search giant is looking into developing self-driving delivery trucks, just as Amazon readies its autonomous delivery drone fleet.
Google’s patent outlines what it calls an “autonomous delivery platform” for delivery trucks. The trucks would be fitted with a series of lockers that could potentially be unlocked with a PIN code sent to the person waiting for the delivery before the truck arrives at their location. The patent also suggests the locker could be unlocked by a customer’s credit card, or an NFC reader. After the package is dropped off, the truck will continue on to its next delivery point, or return to the depot to pick up more packages.