Transparency in Hardware/Software Interfaces

Craig and Gjarc are here.

Excellent. And we we are both speaking with my voice. We're after a fashion. After a fashion. So we live from the litter box.

Live from the litter box.

We we we are both both here in person.

Yeah.

Last time we were in person, we got you to confess to things that we don't think are crimes. The the Dave Lightman. So I'm looking forward to, you know, maybe we'll return the favor. I'm not sure. But, you know, maybe it's the it's the in person body language that says, no. No. Now is the time. But but I'm closer. Before here.

God. I had forgotten all about that.

Oh, god. I I just I I I think about that. And I mean, I know we laugh for our own jokes, but I just think about your your your confession. Well, it's deathbed confession or it's when you are faking a medical emergency in the deposition. So oh, a bunch of things. So we got this RFD that Yes. That are so I and I did as I have been doing. Do you use you use ChatGPT to review documents that you've been

Yeah. For sure. I used ChatGPT to, review form nine ninety just just last night.

I when I was walking around like a maniac. I really? Yes. That's how did it do? That's actually that's a great use for GPT.

It it was very good. I mean, it's good it's good for these kinds

of The the

formal documents. That's really good. And I was trying to understand if my little league is corrupt or merely merely seems annoying. And And? TPT. I'm not sure it yeah. I'm not sure I'm smart enough to understand what chat TPT told me.

You you didn't find the the hidden disclosure in there that brings down LLM the little league?

Not yet. No. Searching. That as as Deep Throat passes you an LLM.

That's right. So I'd I'd I use it when I like, when I'm writing a document. I am I like to use it to review documents. I find it to be, really useful in that regard.

Like review what you've written?

Or review what I've written. Okay. Yeah. Do wanna do this? I do. I do. For sure. I find this to be so I started doing this because, Bridget made it clear that she was not interested in she that her period of time on this planet of listening to me read blog entries aloud before I posted them had basically ended. So it was, you know, the that's fine.

Marriage seems like the right time.

Twenty. Is that what

you said? Twenty.

Yeah. Yeah. Twenty years of marriage. Yeah. No. It's exactly. She gave me two decades and, you know, she wants the rest back. I can't blame her. So I I and I and I think I actually use it a little too late in my editing process because it is filled with too much praise. I feel it's like, wow. This is really amazing stuff you got here. I mean, it's like, come on. I'd say tend I mean, I know it tends to kiss ass a little bit. I feel the do you feel this? A lot.

A lot. A lot. And it's

Well, I think we're but let's not discount. It's I mean, it's made some good observations, I feel. Just my number one fan. It's just my number one fan. Yeah. It does. It it tends to to, to kiss a lot

of ass. Yeah. You know, I I think my fear of using it is that I am that I will be too influenced by it. That, like, that

it'll it it

will get away from me, and suddenly, will have I hate. Become the thing I hate.

You know, yeah, I don't think you have worry about that because it doesn't the the feedback that it gives is actually pretty good. It is it tends to be like, hey. You, like, you could use a transition sentence here Yeah. Or I felt like this idea could be slightly like, it well, actually, it it only does that though after falling over itself to praise you. It's like, I mean, if I had against my own will, if I were if I had to find a single issue with this, it may be that you've misspelled these eight words.

Then so Simon Wilson was tell telling us.

Yeah. Yeah. They it doesn't do

well on low pass filter of tokenization first.

So Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So it and doesn't do well on grammar either. I I really, you know although I did. I I definitely like because and now I've become very self conscious that I'm, like, using expressions that only that because people will tell me like, oh, yeah. That's that's definitely a you ism. I'll be like, no. That's not like

No. Everyone's been saying that for the past twenty years again.

Yeah. Right. No. That's been you've been saying that for the twenty years. So now I become very self conscious, but I find that ChatGPT is, like, a good way to just check that. Right? Right. This is the I I suggested to, an oxide engineer who will remain nameless that he really needed to bail the cat on this. And he's like, what? You mean bell what? Are you having a stroke? And I kind of do you but if I say bell the cat, do you know do know what I mean?

Yes. I think. Wait.

Are you being like Chatty Paty? You're kissing my ass right now.

What a great great.

What an excellent allegory.

So what I think what I have always understood that to mean Yeah. Whether from you or from someone else is that the the cat is like going around murdering birds and belling the cat is like, you know, like putting safeguards on it.

That's right. Okay. So it is actually it's mice. Sure. But the that's exactly it. And the the mice wish to, have the idea. And I think this this should come up, like, a lot more frequently, belling the cat. Because this is like someone has got the genius idea, like, should put a bell on the cat. K. And then we would know when the cat's coming. Makes sense. It's where it's like, great. Who's gonna like, great genius. Like, someone needs to go put the bell on the cat. Yeah.

Nice. Yeah. Definitely. Did you write it?

I'm not accepting follow-up questions at this time. No. It's got like it I mean, it's I mean, this is that's like a medieval piece of artwork in there. Mean, anyway, it's it's got a very, very deep history, doing that. I get concerned, and so I ask ChatGPT on those things.

I I don't know. I I I could I could be wrong.

I could be wrong. But the, so then like, okay. I know that. So no. You should, you should do this. It's worth doing. I think it's it's interesting and, so and I also like to, so it it was full of praise. This r f d didn't get a a whole Unlike your wife. Unlike my wife. Exactly.

No. I haven't.

So the, the only, like, taste of Gemini I've gotten is the stuff that you get, like, on search results and so on that is, like, absolutely atrocious. Procious. And I mean, atrocious. Atrocious. How did Google and I mean, it in particular gets something wrong that's really too vulgar for the podcast, which is saying something because I feel like we've, you know, we've talked about two headed showers in this podcast.

And it's like How many ricochet was it in reviewing this r f d?

No. No. Right. Are you gonna stay with me? Are you not? Just like I need you to stay with me. Okay. So Gem anyway, back to Gemini. That's why I I wanna use Gemini from Google. Makes sense. Makes sense. So I actually like sign up for Gemini because you gotta like sign up for it and it's kind of like we couldn't do it on the oxide accounts. Did it anyway. Spin the button. Okay.

I Please and thank you.

Please and thank you. Like, here's what I would like to do. What do you think about that?

Like, Are you familiar with x?

Yeah. Right. And I just I just love how enthusiastic Wade always wants to it's always like, oh, yeah. God. Would love to review. Oh my god. Reviewing an r f d? Yeah. I thought you'd never ask. So I did that with and you know we talked about, DeepSeek on Cerebras. Yes. And looking inside of the id of the sort of thing

Yes.

Was disturbing. Disturbing. Yeah. Disturbing. It's really the one word that comes to mind of, like, this is something that's gonna be, like, found out. Like, I actually know nothing, and this person is about to find out that I know nothing. So, the I with with Gemini, it also shows you it's thinking. But it's actually it I just on the question of, hey. I'd like you to review a document. Can you do that for me?

No. I I like

Oh, you you should definitely. I mean, it so, like, asking it, like, why did Optane fail? Or why did what happened to Cannon Lake? Or I was asking what happened to the Memristor at the machine? And then I'm like, I want a research report on the failure of the machine at HPE. And it was like, it was you know? It's pretty good. Mostly came from Wikipedia page, I think. But anyway.

Yeah. Like any good research report.

But I definitely learned at part of this, and I I had posted this yesterday. I think you'd seen this that the, this is not their fault because this is in, like, I think 2012 that they started this. This next generation bus protocol Yes. Which I think they called the next generation messaging interface or something like that. Anyway, it was NGMI. It's awesome. Which is great. And the NGMI the and and the NGMI is not gonna make it. I think only came later as part of cryptocurrency.

Yeah. That makes that sounds right, but it's perfect.

It it it is. It is perfect. It does remind me of I I actually have mutual acquaintance of ours. Went to go work for a company named ISIS. They changed the company name.

That's right.

You were Yeah. It's a tough one. ISIS is a tough one. Yeah. Fully timed. Fully timed. Exactly. This is pre ISIS. Alright. Where are we?

RFD. RFD. Okay. Your many reviewers.

And my many reviewers. Exactly. My my my many sycophantic reviewers.

But but to close the loop

Yeah. Not to bell the cap though. Yeah. So

which which which which one did you prefer in terms of its feedback? I mean, not not just which praised you more strenuously, but, like, which gave you I

think that Gemini could really learn something for the praise that you that that Chachi Pizzer. I would say it was valuable to have them both read it. Yeah. And it was not extraordinarily valuable to have either of them read it. Okay.

I read it. I read it. I have notes.

You seem so defensive. Seems so defensive. Alright. You've been Highlights. Can I I mean, just routine? Can you see the notes? I mean, I understand. I don't know. You can't quite make them out from me here. That just looks like that just looks like scribbles. Pretend writing. Pretend writing. Wait a minute. That's in fact, it even says this is pretend. No. So the and I think you were out last week. I was. Yes. So I think you probably came back to, like, I have missed something.

Well, you said you posted this. Yes. And I was kind of like, what is the antecedent? Like, assumed Paul Graham had done something horrible or something. A reasonable assumption.

Exactly. A very reasonable assumption.

Yeah. But in No.

No. No.

No. No. I was aware of.

I I not to the best of my knowledge, unless Paul Graham is making has started a silicon company. No. This came out of, I would say, repeated frustration that we have had. And I yes. I had some conversations last week that kind of boiled it over, but the repeated, I would say, disconnects that we have had with silicon providers. So, I mean, to be clear, we make our own hardware, but we don't make our own chips.

Yeah. Because, like, we don't have half a billion dollars.

That's right. That's why we don't make our own chips because we don't have half billion dollars. And making one's own ASICs is still really, really, really expensive.

Much less expensive, like, than it used to be, but still really, really question. Well, we shouldn't have to build a fab.

You don't have to build a fab, but in the in the so, yes, assume you're in the fabless era.

Yes.

But it would be interesting to know if a if a if a because, I mean, certainly, if you're gonna build, like, on an older node, I would assume that that's cheaper. Totally. Right. But honestly, the part of the what makes it expensive is the proprietary tool chain that you've got to get. Yeah. You you gotta go like

Especially for the for the most advanced node.

For most of it yeah. And so I that would be actually be interesting to know because I actually think that's kind of one of the important things that actually just to aside and aside, you know, we've talked about, like, kind of the moat that CUDA has, and I think that we, rightfully, the CUDA moat, I think, and it was, Andy and James that were saying this. Like, look, the the CUDA moat is not as deep as people think it is, which I absolutely think is the case. Yeah. I think the TSMC moat is deeper than you can possibly imagine.

is this is my this is why we've been trying so hard to get Morris to, to come on the show. We're just

I just the dates just don't line up. I mean, it's I and I mean, honestly, in the end, it's like it's the constraint is on us. Like, we he honestly if our calendars weren't quite

as booked, we we could have made this work. We'd try to be flexible.

We'd to be flexible. That's okay. Gong goes, gonna miss so much. Exactly.

No. I'm with you. I think that that that TSMC lead feels like

just they're twice over the horizon. Because, you know, it is and I think it's like so much deeper than we can really fathom. I was talking to a the a former colleague of ours who works for is doing an ASIC and trying to understand that they're doing it on TSMC, of course. Yeah. And, like, just getting into, like, all of the details. First of it's the first decision you make.

Who you're

Who the yeah. It is not like, oh, let's I mean, it is it is like which language are we gonna write this thing in? Yeah. It is not a decision that you, like, revisit. Yeah. And, I mean, it's actually not a bad analog in terms of, like, the but there's only one programming language, and it's from TSMC. So, I mean, it you you make it very, very early. Then they give you a bunch of IP of surrounding Right. When we say IP, we mean, like, these blocks that do things. Right.

And it's like you're if you're doing I squared c or if you're doing

This is on the actual sure, I squared c, but this is like even like inside of the ASIC.

I see. Like, even even smaller kind of strange logic components.

That's right. That's right. That's right. And the, I mean, it and it is so like, that interface between you and TSMC is, like, porous. You know what I mean?

I mean, for so many reasons. Like, among them, like, on a company that is behind in terms of technology and hoping that miraculously they catch up and betting on a company which has flipped on everyone who's believed in them.

Everyone who's believed on them. Exactly. Who has and so, I mean, it's like we they really need to get to, I think, the their their only move. They've gotta do something that's, like, radical. And they are this is, I think, what is kind of the impedance mismatch right now.

I love it. Doesn't it seem impossible? Just like from a from like a shareholder perspective and Yeah.

Yeah. I mean It it it you know what? I all avenues for Intel seem impossible right now. I'm with you. Like, clearly, an avenue is gonna be the avenue that it takes, but literally everything seems it seems impossible that they fail. It seems impossible that they succeed. It's I I just I don't know. But I think that they it it seems possible that they open it all. Okay. Unlikely. Unlikely.

Exciting.

Exciting. But I believe that more strongly than ever. And so the but we're several layers up the stack. We're not inside of an ASIC. Right?

Or maybe volume that you could phrase it.

I mean okay. So, you know, I think that, like, maybe I could have done it in a way that would not have elicited a restraining order. But

Oh, he's joking, folks. Exactly.

Come on. Come on. That was a joke. That was a joke. No. I I I think that the, and but it's something that every that actually, like, the industry needs.

I'm totally with you. And I have also, seen people filling out forms for for restraining orders. Like, I've been at some of these, like, SSD vendor summits. Raised my hand saying, you know, what about opening the the the firmware on this thing? Totally. Very popular idea.

Super everyone's super interested. Even

even our colleague Robert with me at these events kind of shies away from me knowing that it builds additional credibility with everyone else in the room.

Okay. But so you know what? They you speaking of SSD vendors or actually hard drive vendors, a couple of these vendors would because I Robert and I were the same were like that in terms of, like, we would go to these events and I'd be like, hey, look, you might not wanna be you might not wanna sit close together because I'm gonna be I I feel a big one coming on. There we go. But the people inside the vendors would say, like, god, we love having you there because you are saying the things to our management that we're saying.

No. Right? Right. And because they view this software hardware interface as part of the secret sauce. Right. Yes. And, like, part of the differentiation.

I guess that's it. I mean, I which is so so this is the thing that I that that obviously you and I both find frustrating. Yeah. It's like, what I oh, no. No. Like, what what do you think I'm asking you to do? Like, do you think I'm asking you I'm not asking you to, like, put your RTL on the Internet or whatever. Right? I'm not asking you to eve I'm not asking you to, like, open your even your flash translation layer for the SSD vendor. I'm not asking you to open source it.

That's right. Bad example.

Bad example. But, like, what what I want you to I want to be able to write the lowest level software to this thing. Yeah. I want to like, I don't want any layer between me and the hardware. And that also gets like that itself gets kind of vague because the actual definite this is what we're getting like. And and I'm I do I promise I'm not gonna do this? The hardware software thing? Like, what is hardware? What is software? I

don't know. It's pretty good.

I don't know. Well, they were just like, it becomes really hard to differentiate hardware. So, like, what is what is software?

Yeah. Especially when you are like, when when you're building this ASIC and, you know, parts of it are in a ROM or whatever, and it's like where, you know, where where exactly where does one part end and the other part begin?

Right. I mean, you've got, like so, I mean, I I mean, as an example, you've got I mean, x 86 is like, that's the instruction set Mhmm. Of the microprocessor. But it's actually, like, not the it's actually just the interface of the the right? It's like that gets translated to micro ops Right.

In the title?

More or less anywhere. I mean, I know, like, I the word open does exist in there, but, like, five times, not like like, the transparency is it is in the RFD quite a bit more than open. Yeah. And that is very deliberate because I feel that people stub their toe on open. And open because, I mean, it does mean about I mean, you got the

right? Yeah. Yeah. It kind of is almost evocative of, like, a religious belief rather than, like, a a reasoned, you know, business value.

That's right. That's right. Even though I think you got so many different definitions of open. Got the open systems definition of, like, son from the it's we should, we should pay a little respect to our former employer. This is its 40 birthday. Did you see that?

I did see that, actually. I I It's kind of a posting It's

kind of fitting.

Yeah. Backsides of the the meta sign, which

Yeah. Well, there was a there was a very nice LinkedIn post that that talked about a bunch of technologies, including ours. Oh, it was very cool. Yeah. That was very nice.

I will tell you something funny. I went looking through my Google photos to find, like, my picture as an intern in front of that sign because I know I had it. Yeah. And? It's on film. Like, I know. So I don't actually have it in

Is it not developed?

It's no. It's like it's like I have a hard copy

Oh, yeah. Yeah.

In a book called a photo album.

Tell me more.

Used to be

a physical analog. It's animes anyway. You should scan

it, though. Sure. I could do that. Yes.

That'd be great. Or take a photo of it.

Exactly.

But, yeah, I would love to see that sign. What kind of where are we on the kind of the hair length in that sign?

I I was like I was an intern. I was like

But this is like Cleaned up. But this is like how we count the rings on the tree. This is how I know I'm able to age it by like by looking at the

It was like two it was go go days. It was 2,000.

It was 2,000. That was the the summer you couldn't find housing. Yeah. What a what a great summer.

Yeah. For some.

For some. Exactly. For those in the roof over their heads. But so we you've got kind of the Sun Microsystems open systems kind of era, that definition of open, which is really kind of the that's the definition of open we would be really thinking of here. That's right.

And and there, it's not open source. It's like

Open protocols. Protocols. Yeah. Exactly. Right. Right. And then you've got the so kind of that era. Then you obviously got open source. Yeah. And I think, again, I think open source, it just I think it conflates what we're asking. Yeah. Because people think that, like, no. I wanna take you should take your software that you've written, chip vendor, and you should open all that. I mean, I'd for them to do that, but that's actually not what we're asking. Right?

I thought the way you took it apart, it took candidly, it took me a couple of passes through, you know, just to, like, understand the taxonomy.

You know who didn't require a couple passes? Chat, you can click it. I know. Know. I know.

And a lot more of a lot more praise praise that we do.

Exactly. Just not accustomed to this.

Yeah. Exactly.

No. No. Okay. Yeah. So well, no. Actually, that is kinda what I'm looking for because it is it's a little bit we don't really tax we haven't really taxonomized these interfaces, I don't think.

Yeah. Right. And and also this is not like, candidly, a world where I operate personally day to day as much as you do.

Right. Yeah.

I'm I'm higher up in the stack. So, like, some of these distinctions are a little subtle.

Yeah. And I think I think Rai is here. Rai, know that thank you for your, your inspiration here on on this RFD as we were kind of realizing that we need to better communicate what we're actually looking for because, again, this is something that we we just had sorry. So so sorry. You were talking about the the tax automization of the Oh, yeah.

No. I thought it great. So you talked about instruction set architecture totally made sense to me, and then data interfaces and control interfaces, which just took took another read through to, like, understand that. But even in there, you know, you gave some fuzziness. Like, these are not, like, always crisp.

Right. In fact, they're rarely crisp. But the because I think that the reason for that is that people so these interfaces get treated differently. So if you look at, like, x 86 Yeah. The instruction set architecture has been really well documented Yeah.

Right.

And that is actually those are the more problematic interfaces that that we've had.

And I I think even for peripherals, I mean, I come from the networking space, and so that's that's the space that I live in. But, I think particularly for networking peripherals, like, that control phase is so important, because, like, you're not running code already on that device. Like, you're running code in the operating system that's running a control plane that's communicating with that device. And so getting all the data off of that device and for networking, doing things like loading tables and enabling SerDes and things like that, all the things that we need to do to make a network actually function, depend on that control interface. And so it's just so critical to if you wanna actually understand how your system is working beneath you, then you have to have kind of those those two things.

That's right. And you kinda end up with if you kind of have one of these that's well documented and the other that's entirely opaque, you you're not actually getting total transparency into the system. Mhmm. And I think that on in particular, if you don't have the control interfaces transparent, you can't actually generate the ecosystem that you need to load the programs that are gonna execute on the instruction set architecture. So, I mean, so to think about x a six terms.

Yeah.

The bias Right. To do that for you. Right. Right. What that stuff is doing is loading your programs.

That's to say that you're getting this blob of of, of code that embodies the proprietary understanding of that hardware software interface. And then you, the consumer of that, has some different possibly unrelated interface on top of that, and that that blob, you know, between you and the hardware just is creating opacity.

That's right. That's right. And so you even when you if the instruction set is well documented.

Yeah.

So, like, I mean, if you looked at at PTX, which is the NVIDIA thing, it's pretty interesting. The supposedly, the the DeepSeek folks actually coded straight to PTX. They didn't didn't use CUDA at all.

Oh, interesting.

And but PTX is actually a virtual instruction set. And historically, it's my understanding. I've never never not done really driver development this level. But this is also PTX is the thing that they've, like they documented.

Mhmm.

And that gets translated into an instruction set that actually runs on the GPU, and that historically there there are times when that was been done by the driver. But you don't get to see any of that. That's all proprietary. Gotcha. And so this is where, like, instruction set's documented, but the control interface is not.

I didn't did

too many errors in kind of the transcription there. But I do think one of the important observations there is the this idea of an instruction set architecture and then, a data interface, control interface. This is true for lots of different kinds of parts. This isn't just CPUs, especially in in a world with with acceleration. And then I also want to clarify some things that are not interfaces.

Yeah. I mean, I definitely have scar tissue from DPDK, but, like, the existence of DPDK in the networking space is really interesting. And, like, back in the the 02/2016, '2 thousand '17 era, I ran a bunch of systems, for network data plane processing at, like, the 40 to a hundred gigabit level that we wrote on DPDK and, the Linux Express data path or XDP. And these are frameworks that allow you to basically make manipulations to, network traffic every single packet as it goes through, like, a multi hundred gigabit device. To do this, you have to buy an extremely powerful, like, you know, best in class, Intel Xeon at the time, or AMD EPYC server.

Yeah. And, Ryan, so we're going into Tofino a little bit. I mean, obviously, we we've spoken about Tofino before, and the kind of our you know, you you've got a kind of a great rubric on Tofino in terms of the the good, the bad, and the ugly. And the ugly of Tofino really did come down to a lot of these interface issues. Do you wanna elaborate on that a little bit?

Yeah. I mean, it it it completely came down to that. Right? Like, the Tofino is a great ship. It's extremely predictable, in terms of network performance.

They didn't. And I and I know that folks at Intel, I'm sure, would disagree with us on this. But hand on heart, I believe that the proprietariness of the Tofino stack was an accelerant for their demise. I think that that that they, I feel, that that they they shackled Tofino by having because the know, as I mentioned, like, the compiler was proprietary. So it's now open, which is great, but it's like the the the talks that you kinda need to write the compiler are still closed.

Yeah. I mean, the architecture is fairly unique. Programming for the Tofino is a lot more like programming for an FPGA than it is, for programming for a CPU. And so it's either either your program fits and it runs at line rate, meaning it is gonna run at the packets per second that the overall hardware is capable of or it's not going to fit. And, if if you've read about, like, the RMT architecture in which the Tofino is based, you understand that they're they're kind of playing this multidimensional game of Tetris where the Tofino is like an explicitly staged hardware device, and you have specific resources in specific stages.

And especially challenging when that layer is opaque. Yeah. When it's like, okay. So, like, fine. Like, I this is, like, not the most like, I'm not having a great time over here.

Yeah. That's that's definitely a recurring theme, with almost all the interactions that I've had.

And and that, again, that is, like, that's not unique to Intel Tofino. That was just like that that's been everybody. And really the thing that this is where as low level software engineers, we do go a little bit of our mind. It's like, you know that we're trying to, like, bind more tightly onto your thing.

That's right. You think after I built my own compiler, I'm gonna, like, what?

Switch? Switch. Exactly. I I'm trying to and do you know why I'm trying to buy more tightly on anything? So I can buy more of your parts. Like, you make money on the silicon. Right? You know that. Right? You don't make you don't make money on the compiler.

No. I know we're kind of in an ISA, maybe not monoculture, but like duo culture. But, like, there was a time you would talk about the the two thousands.

Yeah. Are we are we in an ISA duo culture? I don't know that we are.

I kinda. Right?

No. I don't don't think so? No. So what's the duo culture? Just ARM and x 86? Yeah. We got we've got risk five. We've got we we've got the the actual ISA that the Tofino runs on is z 80. Okay. We've got the we've got other ISAs that are we've got we've got some eighty fifty ones kicking around. Okay. We've got Cortex m, obviously.

Yeah. Okay. No. I great. You know? No. If I take

it No. No. But, like, look at the stamp collection over here. This is you're not Okay.

I take your point, but but but look at, like, the mid nineties or whatever. When you've got Yes.

Yes. The different Yes.

All the different vendors with all of their different ISOs and all of their proprietary compilers. Yes. Like, I I just mean that this era that you this this kind of proprietary kind of hoarding of information, like, there there was a analog in the past where for, you know, different different vendors competing at least ostensibly on trying to capture developers. And and all that did go open source, and I

think the open source compilers were an accelerant. Absolutely. And I think that the I mean and, Rai, this is a point that that you've made to to anyone who's selling network silicon who will listen. It's like, look at what happened with x 86 and open source system software with respect to Linux. Yeah. And it's like, how did Intel do with the rise of x 86? Like, pretty well. I mean, okay. Fine. Up until up until there are no possible routes forward. But they, you know, they they they had

They had a good

run. They had a good run.

They had

a good run. And that really needed open source system software. Yeah. Right? You weren't gonna do that with a any proprietary operating system, I don't think.

Yeah. Oh, absolutely. I mean, there's there's there's absolutely no way. Right? Like, when you look at, like, when we have, like, these big, like, debugging sessions at Oxide where, you know and Oxide is a microcosm of, like, you know, the systems programming of the world at large because we build an entire, like, you know, cloud scale or, you know, rack scale computer.

we have the open source Rust compiler ecosystem. So if we need

to go down to the, like, the instruction set architecture level, like, we can do that. And I think that's necessary for building robust systems, and it's necessary for an ecosystem to take hold because you have a large group of people that are collectively trying to build robust systems and solve problems that are useful for other people. But, like, you need that diverse community to be able to, like, collaborate over code, something that is, like, very tangible and, like, arms into the problem type of thing.

Yeah. You're right. The the power of an ecosystem cannot be overstated.

That's right. So you need an ecosystem. And the question is, what do we need out of hardware to create an ecosystem? Yeah. And I and I feel that, like, again, it's even though and I feel it's one of these things that's obvious to anyone doing the software and seemingly not obvious to folks doing the hardware.

I mean, so I love though that one of the most successful examples in this document, in the RFD that you wrote, is one that was done unwillingly in the ICE 40. Like, I love that. Oh, yes. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. What is the most successful ecosystem of this kind? Like, arguably the ICE 40 ecosystem.

I forgot FPGA is. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. But but done done through reverse engineering.

Reverse engineering. Yeah.

But it has spawned this thriving ecosystem.

Yeah. Exactly. You actually get a true open source ecosystem. I and we oh god. We actually tried to explain that to Lattice. Lattice was very Lattice one at some point is like, hey, we should have a call. And we tried to explain to Lattice why we're using their parts, and they're like, we have never heard anyone say this before. Like, we don't know any of this stuff. Like, what are you talking about? And we're like, no.

Uh-uh. Yeah. I mean,

it's like, honestly, we don't know anyone at ST. I mean, I feel that we this is where Robert would be like Robert's already DMing me. I'm sure being like, no. Actually, like, we've we've had, like okay. We do know some people at ST, but we basically have not our relationship with ST, we don't need to be tight with STMicroelectronics, which makes our service processor.

I mean, it's like Says what it does.

Says says what it does. And then I spent some time in some other documentation. I'm like, those docs are amazing.

Wow. They do say what they do.

They do. Do say what they do. Yeah. It's and their docs are really good, and they're, like, really complete. I think I found one error in all of their docs, like an address that was, like, obviously wrong that we had them fix.

They definitely disappear. Yeah. And it just and it goes somewhere else.

And now in in ST's case, like, ST clearly has spent a lot of time and energy documenting this part. So, like, they've got a hunch that this is important. But to go to back to your Lattice example, this is reverse engineered, and Lattice is basically, like, agreed to not litigate. And so if you're a Lattice field engineer, like, you may have, like, missed that day on the Internet. And you just may be totally unaware that there are these people that are using Lattice parts that aren't using any Lattice tooling whatsoever.

we called GLaDOS. They didn't know what they didn't know

what you're saying. We called GLaDOS. Exactly. And so the alright. So so but the tier one is this, like, public documentation. That's all we're asking for. Do what ST is doing, please. Well, we can't do that. It's like, oh my god. No. No. No. We and, again, it's like the things that they can't do and it will depend because, like, in Rye's world of of switching silicon, it's just a darker world. Right? And right.

Yeah. Absolutely. Yeah. You, yeah. You you you don't need to you don't need to tell me. I I I'm aware of the darkness in which I live. And

so it it's like, okay. No. No. Like, public documentation, definitely not. Like, okay. So how about, like, documenting the stuff privately and just make like, give us the like, give us some docs that aren't public and just allow us to build software on top of them. And there are a couple examples of that. That that's kind of like, okay. That's a little less desirable. Then the we're getting less desirable is like, I know.

And this is open source, which is effectively encoding Yes. What that

That's right. That's right. That's right. So you okay. You're not gonna give me the documentation, but you're gonna give me some source code that actually uses the system, and I can use that. And not great. It can be, I believe, although it's actually gonna sometimes it could be more useful to have, like

Sometimes more useful now you're looking at something that works rather than trying to

assemble Easy. Easy. Now keep how you put words in my mouth.

Something that they claim works?

Even then, get backing back up just a little bit. Like, just take one more half step back.

Less

shame? There there you go. Exactly. So but that's and then you get to, like, the the lattice tier, the reverse engineered tier where it's like, okay, this is just like and you could also have something where and this does exist, by the way, where you have NDA docs that have gotten out into the Internet. And generally, like, if someone leaves a trade secret that's kinda, like, lying around, like, litigation is not with you who found it in a dumpster, it's with whomever violated the covenant with the company.

Leaked it in a in a a photo.

We so we leaked it in a photo, which I thought it was like BMC humor. Was very fun. It was for the right kind of audience. It was very funny. Yeah. It was very meta. Another example that I I point out is, like, Laura's work on the we're essentially in the OPC 55. We talked about that. And, you know, obviously, the now the information that Laura learned about the OPC 55 s 69 ROM, like anyone can go use that. Like, that's we've documented that for them.

Okay. Question for your editors. Yes. Do they see reverse engineer and suggest any softer phrases? Because I feel like if they document like that Yes. Like, if you think open is hostile, reverse engineer.

Okay. This is a great point. And I you know, the the Or you judge GPTing,

you know.

You that's I the a really insightful point. And, boy, if I had to find any criticism with your point, I mean, if we really gave you no alternative. No. This is great point. You know, the the the bots did not say anything, but I actually wondered about that. So I actually did because you're right. That, like, oh, like, oh, yeah. Open is, like, open is too scary. So let's just throw out reverse engineering. Like, why don't you just, do you wanna put I clear wall.

I think if you're saying, like, toughen up, I agree.

Like Yeah. I think we we need to be willing to say, yeah, reverse engineering.

You gave me the blob. Like, I'm gonna do what I do. Yeah. If you don't wanna give me the blob, don't give

me the Don't give me the blob.

Like, encrypt the blob if you

wanna be a jerk. But I I, like, I get to see I get to learn how the machine works. Yeah. And that's and I think that that's a natural right. Again, this is where it's like, we just the phrase natural right seems seems a little, a little bellicose. Yeah. But, no, I I think it so, no, I damn it. I left it there.

I mean, at at some point, it's like, what else are you gonna do? Right? It's like, I've, you know, been freezing my ass off in the data center, staying at the DC in the morning till, like, three in the morning every single night because some switch is doing some weird thing that is destroying my business, and, you know, destroying my health. So what what am I supposed to do? Because your support engineers are, like, effectively telling me to turn it off and turn it on again.

Hypothetically. Hypothetically. Exactly. Well, no. And I think but I do think so part of the reason I actually wanted also to leave the term in there is to remind folks, silicon vendors, that, like, hey.

Why I think it'd be a shame.

Right. I'm just saying it'd be a shame. It'd be a shame. So, no, I great question. One that chat GBT was too scared to I I I should have looked inside of I'm sure I could get Gemini to be like, god, I really need him to tone down this this turn, but he's not gonna take it well.

And so, like, this is better than just complete opacity and we're gonna give you some some blob and we're gonna give you a different abstraction on top of it. But I would say in some, like, in some ways it actually feels worse. It feels worse because like, it enables you to do cool stuff, but not, like, tell anyone, like, it it it it it limits the scope of the innovation that you can then do as opposed to being completely shut out from it.

So so so you're saying that this is allowing you to eat the fruit of a tree of knowledge of good and evil, and you and you recognize that you are nude. Kind of. Right. Yeah. Right.

Exactly. I mean, like, I get that, like, in in many ways, it is technically superior to just a complete opacity. Right. But maybe worse your psyche.

Yes. I yeah. No. I think that there's a there's a valid point there.

Yeah. And, I mean, it's it's potentially really damaging to your customers. Right? So, like, at Oxide, we're a platform developer. Right?

We as we

as the, as the customer, as the end operator of the system, depending on these for, our organization, didn't have access to that. And so it's extra like, it it doesn't do anybody any good, to have the platform vendor be able to look at this but leave the operators and the ultimate end users of this technology in the dark. And that's one of the big reasons why I came to Oxide because I wanted to change that for networking, and hope to be able to change that while I'm here at Oxide.

It even seems to create an obstacle. Right? Then becomes, what can I share with the customer? Right. He's like, I know secret knowledge that I have.

Know I know the secret knowledge of how to use this thing. It's like

Yeah. Exactly.

I know the I I know the top secret knowledge of, like, where the gas pedal is. Definitely can't tell them that. Don't don't tell them that. Yeah. And and right, you're exactly right.

That's the that's the world we're trying to build. You know, it's not a question of if. It's a question of when. But It's a

question of

we'll see of of when the when will be.

That's right. So okay. So then we get to, like, the the the arguments. I'm trying to collect, like, what are the stated arguments against transparency? And you'll do notice that that I I did differentiate between stated arguments and the unstated arguments.

I like that you put them on quotes too. Just

Would you like that? Yeah. Yeah. And I did I how did I do on that? Did I on on the did I make them

I know this is not the first time on the podcast we've mentioned the four questions from the path of

Oh, yeah. That's right. Yeah. Yeah. I love the four questions.

It felt very, like, the fucking

child simple stuff. Right. Okay. That's good. So, oh, yeah. Where are we? So transparency will allow someone to copy me.

Yeah. Felt very simple Yes.

Yeah. No. I think you're right. And I think and, you you know, what I have found when these stated arguments so transparency so if I open my interface, someone else is gonna copy it. It's like, are you kidding me? What? Like, no. No one cares. No. Do you know what's much more likely? You're gonna die. That's much more likely. What you you're gonna be lucky if if the entire universe cares so much about your interface that they're scrambling to copy it. Yeah. Man, you'd be so lucky.

It's like, let's walk this forward. You open the thing. You build such a thriving ecosystem Yes. That it becomes that you the the hardware software interface that you have defined because so such a standard that the only way to operate is by mimicking your hardware software interface. And then a competitor comes along who can do it better than you, then, like, why do

you Why do you exist?

Why do you why do you deserve to exist? You deserve to exist. Like, you you you you fumbled everything.

Yes. And, you know, actually, this reminds me when in the so the the first time I can remember open source coming up at Sun with respect to Solaris was, I think, 1997. It could be off by, like, a year. It could be as late as 1998. But I remember thinking and, you know, this obviously, my thinking on this changed pretty quickly.

Yeah. And I whatever. I think that's the only attitude that's not a kind of cowardly attitude. Yeah. I mean, I think the the alternative is, I think, along the lines of what you've kind of you've observed about inherited wealth. Yes. Preserving wealth.

Yes. A %. Yes. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. Continuing to innovate.

Continuing to innovate. No. Absolutely. Absolutely. So so that argument is simple trials. I'll leave you on simple trials. Then you get to the, transparency will be a support burden. We get this one a lot that, like, I I can't support you if you do this. And we're like, we don't want you to support us. I mean, we don't you know what I mean?

Yeah. They they, you know, they can't support us if they if they give us the interface, which is exactly what they want. Right? They we don't need their support. And

And and then they're like kinda like, we don't believe you, basically. It's like, no. No. No. We're just not gonna be able to support you. It's like, we don't want your support. And that one, I feel we have just had to earn. And I think that we have earned it with a couple of companies. And, you know, I don't think I'm speaking out of turn to say we've probably earned it with AMD. I think AMD had this exact objection to what we wanted to go do with respect to holistic boot.

Yeah. We definitely have to re reearn it every single time, every single hardware vendor that we talk to. It's a it's a new conversation. We we go through this, and, you know, ultimately, it winds up working.

I I I yeah. This r f d is an attempt to not have to rerun it from zero every time, so I'm hoping we could get there. But so that's this is one that can get people. The one that that the and so that, maybe that's is that the wise child, wicked child with the it it's simple, wicked, wise?

They're they're a bunch of children.

It didn't you know, they're a bunch of children. It's like, I don't need you know, don't to keep them straight anymore. I don't even know. Is that when the wicked one? Wicked one is I don't know. Then you get to transparency is a security risk, and that can be frustrating. That because that's that's bullshit. Yes. That's just absolute bullshit.

And that's the argument against any kind of open, I think.

Yeah. Yes. Any kind of transparency.

Any kind of transparency.

Yes. And the this is the Kirchhoff's principle.

It's kind

of this intro and, yeah, so this is an interesting a a a principle from a Auguste Kirchhoff, who is a nineteenth century Dutchman, who had the observation that in a cryptographic system, you should be able to make public everything except for the key, and that should not represent a vulnerability. Right. Right. Right. Kirchhoff.

I I hear this continuously. It's it's always there, especially in the networking space. It's it's there a lot.

And you know what's actually also bonkers is when you have someone who is making that argument to someone for whom security is extremely important, like, is much more sophisticated about security than you are. You know, when I'm you know, you it's like, you chip vendor are making that argument to, you know, to a to a federal government or to someone who who does, like, who does security for a living. It's like, yeah. No. They

And, you know, I don't I don't claim to be particularly sophisticated when it comes to security, but I do imagine

Adelovital, security researcher. I do imagine that, like, part of

the upshot of this is that, a lack of transparency here means that, like, let's say there is a vulnerable.

Yeah. Yes. Right.

Then it will be Only the bad guys will. Only the worst guys.

Oh, yeah. Only the bad guys will.

Exactly. Well funded as who would know.

Yeah. Only the state actors.

Only the state actors who would then be able to exploit it in the worst ways possible Yes. As opposed to

This is about in the conversation where this argument turns into something else. This is where they're like, okay. Don't wanna have this. Like, okay. Yeah. I'd like this this one is kinda falling apart in front of me. Actually, I wanna go back to something else. I wanna go back to, like let me go back to someone suing my IP. Now that But but this is a

lazy argument fundamental. Lazy argument fundamental.

Yes. This is

not this this this is not this is something that that feels right on its face and doesn't bear scrutiny, certainly not in 2025.

That that's right. Does not bear scrutiny is a a an absolute redux of the arguments against open source Yeah. That I feel have all been debunked. Yes. And, you know, being transparent makes something more secure.

My hands are tied. This this is also another, like I mean, we've seen

this, like, the lawyers in control.

Yes. Like, department of no.

Department of no. And then you'll be like, okay. Like, what okay. So so let's get that agreement in front of us. Like, well, I'm not a lawyer. Like, I'm not gonna have to, like no. I actually don't know anything about it. Like, well, okay. Does anyone there? Does any wait.

Yeah. Especially because we're not saying, like, open source the RTL.

No. That's it. The interface. Right. The interface. So you're like, that IP, like, how does that violate your agreement? Right? Just seems very strange. Yeah. I don't know. Have you heard of this one, Rhyme? Have you heard this one in your a lot in your travels? Is this a common one, is this an uncommon one?

It's extremely common in networking. Like, network ASICs are built out of a bunch of different IPs from a bunch of different shops usually unless you're someone with an enormous amount of resources. Like, I think Cisco, like, makes some of their own chips, like, completely, without buying IP from others. But I think most of the the, you know, medium size enterprises in town that are making networking ASICs, they're buying IP from somebody, particularly from their EDA vendor probably buying SerDes IP and things like that. Yeah.

But I'm really surprised that those restrictions include, like, no. You can't make avail so you're gonna buy this PCIe block from me, which has a bunch of, like, register space associated with it. And they're like, oh my god. No. No. You can't disclose that register space to anybody.

This is just fun. This is just like word-of-mouth fun that Yes. Is like, again, doesn't bear scrutiny. And it's like, look, if we do anything this this with this thing, we're gonna have to talk to the legal department. And like, I'm not gonna do that. You're not gonna do that.

Right. Yes. Move forward. Move forward. Right. Exactly. It's way it's kind of a table veto. Yes. I think so too. Yep. I this. Like, you're much more bellicose than I am on this one. I'm gonna bring you into the conversation next time. You're extremely unreasonable. Like, actually, no. I've got somebody even more unreasonable. I'll like, you thought I was bad cop. I'm you're you're gonna after after love me. After crazy cop, you'll be begging for bad cop. Yeah.

It's definitely, like, a barrier that I encounter a lot. That doesn't say anything about its legitimacy,

but Oh, obviously.

I mean,

you know, I see on this one. So my position on this one is like, okay. I'm I'm gonna accept this, that you are you've got some agreements with some IP providers that are preventing you from making some of the control interface available. We're gonna put, like, rings around those. And we're gonna say because I do think, like, you get into this is being used as part of an all or nothing argument.

Yeah. I think it's a combination of the fact that this is already something that they don't really want to do, and this is just Yes. Like an external force that they can bring into the the conversation. And I I think a lot of this for networking in particular has to do when things go analog. Like, a lot of the chip vendors don't have, like, the analog circuit as expertise in house.

It but so right. Those are kinds of the the aspects of the parts that, like I mean, not that we don't care about that, but it's, like that feels like that's the part of the interface that we are least concerned about from the perspective of that transitive transparency. Is that I mean, that's Yeah.

I I

Is that true?

Yeah. I I I think so. But I think for, like, you know, it's kind of, like, all tied up in this big nasty pile of spaghetti in terms of, like, the underlying IP mess, which is

Right.

And, again, I'm not saying this is, like, a legitimate thing, but it's it happens a lot, and it it sucks.

Yeah. I think it's a scare tactic. I think it's like, oh, do wanna get the lawyers involved?

Yeah. Well, so and so my, like, way of saying, like, okay. No. No. We we let's wait in, and let's start marking each of these interfaces about how they're encumbered. And, like, your answer, like, well, they're all encumbered. It's like, no. No. No. That's then you're just like, that's disingenuous.

of this reticence. Absolutely. Absolutely. And I think the fact that you start each of these with, I'm afraid that is spot on. Right. Because it it is it is Fear. It is fear.

It's fear. And because it is fear, it's got, like, people don't wanna say they're afraid. So they kinda come out with these these outgrowths that that

are Like, if you're you're never gonna be in a vendor meeting where it'd like, it I'm afraid.

Right. So okay. These things are gonna happen. So I just want you to point to the section in the RFD. You don't have to tell me what it is. You don't have

tell me

to just point to the section in the RFD that captures your fear. Really try so okay. One, I think and I I and sometimes people are explicit about this, but often you kinda have to dig a a bit. I'm afraid that my docs are incomplete. Like, that's very common. Like, I I I it's just not ready yet.

Yeah. And I mean, we've all felt that. I've all felt that. Unlike anything that we've we've been transparent about turned over to the open Yes. I not explained this thing well enough.

Yes. And this was the subject of a rather caustic email I may have sent to our colleagues in CFS. Oh, I remember that. Where the, I mean, as far as I'm concerned, like, Jeff Bonwick had an enormous influence on us. I was actually joking with Eliza recently.

Oh, really? I didn't know that. Yeah.

Really interesting. Yeah. And I do it too. I that like, I'm the same way. The the the all of, like, the Ditres comments, I did as a last thing, not a first thing. And I think it's because, like, I now like, this is, the last step. I understand this whole thing, and I am convinced that ZFS just escaped. ZFS escaped. ZFS, it's like, he came in one morning and the cage bars had been bent, and the window had been shattered, and there were footprints going in the street.

I think there's an aspect of it. It needed to be done, so it was done.

Yeah. And well, and I think in in particular, like, ZFS kind of escaped his ability to hold it all on his head. Yeah. And, like, we didn't have there was no CIO pipeline block comment. Yeah. There's a big theory statement. Like, it's like, Jeff, we've got these extraordinary big theory statements for things that are actually, like, much simpler in comparison. It's like

I remember one on dividing by a billion or

something like that. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. The the the SparkStation two divide by a billion with shifts divide by a billion and then mod a billion. Right. It was beautiful. Beautiful with shifts and ads. And that comment we gotta go find that comment because I think it was open source, but then ripped out when the s s two support was ripped out. Right.

Yes. I will I'll be very interested to see if we remember it the same way.

I am certain that we will not remember it the same way. But I got so frustrated with the poor level of commenting in ZFS that I compared it to the rest of the system.

Yeah. You did like a, you know, LC basically on like Yes. Comment, is it is it code?

Is it comment, is it code? And like, what is the fraction? And like, where are we in that? Yes. And ZFS was bottom decile. Yes.

And I remember you showing me that email before you sent it.

Oh, yeah. And what'd you say?

I said, are you sending this email to feel a different way,

or are

you sending this way to inspire them to change? What did

I what did I say?

And you said the first one.

Oh, yeah. I was like, I already I just sent it. You're like, what? I just sent it. Sorry. Yeah. This is a classic, well, you're gonna do what you're gonna do anyway.

Yeah. And And I did. What happened afterwards? Did they did they take that to heart and comment things?

Yeah. No. I definitely, I definitely didn't do permanent damage to any relationships with that. No. It was not good. It was not yeah. Well, look. You're right. Is that what you wanna hear? Well, first time I've heard it. That's right. Right. You'll you can write a lot. But you were definitely okay. Yeah.

Yeah. Yes. Like, the, like, if I can't do a good job of it, I kinda don't wanna do it.

I don't wanna do it. Yeah. Yeah. And, like, I know it's not done yet, and I'm like, I wish this were in a better state, so I'm not gonna make it available. And it's like, you gotta just get over that. Yeah. And you've gotta and this is where I feel like we're we're kind of like people's doctor. It's like, look, I've seen so many nude bodies. I just don't like, I don't I've seen so much terrible documentation and source code. Like, I just nothing's gonna surprise me.

The the other great benefit of being lazy is that it is a great source of of prioritization. Like, if it the the parts that need to be better documented will find you. Like, the people will will educate you about what actually needs to be documented well.

Maybe in an email with many people on the to line.

That's right. Hopefully, kindly. Hopefully, kindly. But it also will educate you about, like, you could easily have spent all your time documenting the stuff that people don't care about.

Right. Yeah. Anyway, it's got

procrastination. Just saying.

But I also do think that, like, there's some truth to the the fact that when you when the system kind of, like, you've kinda barely got it working, you have a hard time documenting. Wait. Like, the active documentation will kinda reveal that, like, ugh, this is really not the right way to do it.

No. I I actually, so I I went through I always speak about ZFS. There was a time when I was at Delphix when I was I was kinda sitting with Matt Matt Arons and getting the oral history of ZFS and then writing it in blog posts and then comments. And the and part of this, like, the old ZFS write throttle. Once you started, like, writing down the principles of it Yes.

Right. Right. Don't give them this interface. Yeah. Exactly. So I think that that I I I empathize with it, but you gotta get over it. A %. Like, get it. I get where you're coming from. It's incomplete. It'll never be complete. Give it to me anyway, please. Yep. I'm afraid that my source code has got bugs. I get it. Me too. Spoiler. Spoiler. Exactly. Well, and it's like, maybe your HAL layer is so thin that it doesn't have bugs, in

which case, just give us

the goddamn interface. Like, we and if your HAL layer is actually sophisticated, it's gonna have bugs. Yes. So, yeah, spoiler alert. It's got bugs.

It's it's in the same category of bugs sort of. I I guess they're like bugs that you can't fix. But it it but it's still like, yeah. It is what it is. You'll get it next time.

Right. So and then we I mean, if yeah.

If, I mean, if it is revealing mistakes, like, the act of opening up your your interface or your source code is revealing mistakes, then it's gonna reveal mistakes at design or engineering time instead of, you know, operation time when it's gonna cause your customers an outage.

Or it may be the case that those mistakes are exactly the things that are gonna be of most interest as

you're telling me, like, when Yes. Yes.

Yes. When everything is falling apart. Understanding that, like, yeah, I'm I'm I'm unfortunately at a part where this part is, like, not doing its best job. Oh

my god. You're reminding of it to the Toshiba firmware issue where you're like, you have a three thousand millisecond sleep somewhere in your firmware. Like, if you can give me the source code, I'm gonna be able to find where I but exactly. You're just like, I'm sure I'm in some, like, x x x, I hope we don't get here kind of code, but, like, I yeah. I'd like, we just that's the stuff that's gonna bite you Yeah.

Right. The things that you're itchiest about. Yes. Like, that's the thing I care most about. I care

most about that. I care most about that. And it's like not again, it's like, I don't care about, like, great.

Yeah. And, also, I paid for the thing already.

Like, I've already bought the damn thing. I'm not returning it. Exactly. So, yeah, you gotta just get over that one. Unfortunately, I think we are in an era where errata are more publicly available.

Yeah. I I hear this all the time. Right? The the the vendor of whatever chip is worried about getting a bad rep, because someone else is gonna write software around their chip. It's not gonna behave in the way that they wrote the software, and they think that, you know, the this is gonna get out, and people are gonna think that the part is shit. And that's, you know, as irrational as that may sound to you or me, that is something I hear all the time.

And I think that I agree with you, and I think that is the more charitable spin on it. Like, I'm worried about reputational damage. And, Jack, reputational damage on my software running on your part. I mean, it's like, really kind of stretches credulity there. I actually think that there's a there's kind of a less charitable interpretation, which is like, I am hand this chip is being handed to you down to you mere mortals.

I saw draft before that line

was Before Joy's Law. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

But I but I saw someone, some comment on it. I thought that was great.

But, like, I do like the the and because this is in reaction to Microsoft who Bill Joy, I think rightfully accused of being IQ monopolists of, like I mean, it's kind of amazing to me that Microsoft could think that they are, like, the smartest people on the planet in the I mean, just shows how, like, ignorant of the this other world of computing they were, that they were only looking like, yes. Like, congratulations. You are the biggest fish in the personal computing pond. Like, there's this whole other vista of computing in terms of minis and and workstations and mainframes, and it's like, sorry. You're like, you're actually, there there are smart people everywhere.

that taps into another source of fear, which is, will I stall my job?

Yeah. Yeah. For sure. Which is

real, but, like, embracing the community. Right? Like, be be be a leader of that ecosystem rather than an opponent of it.

And I just feel like, you know, we would talk about how, like, making the case for Dtrace for people and that until they had used it to, like, actually solve a problem, there was kind of, like, a bit that they couldn't get over the hump of. Yeah. I kinda feel like until you have had someone that you've never met before kind of swoop down with something extraordinary, an observation, a piece of software they built on your thing, an application of your thing, something you just, like, did not anticipate. You know what I mean? Yeah.

There is something magical about it. Just like a person you never met, never spoken with. Yes. Appearing out of the and doing something amazing or or just contributing, making the thing better.

Making the thing better. Finding a bug. They they they you know, using it. Like and, like, there I kinda feel that has to happen to you before you really appreciate it. Yeah. I don't know, Ry. What do you what do you make of all this?

Yeah. I mean, an observation about all four of these points is that they're all gonna be true no matter what, transparent or not. Right? So afraid my documentation isn't complete. Well, congratulations.

Yeah. Yeah. That's exactly it. That's exactly it. And so then you get so and then, Roy, I think you got a good point. Like, these are true no matter what, whether you're transparent or not. So you might as well be transparent. And and and, again, are the the what, you need this to be able to actually build that software ecosystem. And by the way, look at at Linux and x 86, Intel in particular. Intel was successful in the server space because they had an ecosystem.

Yeah. And, like, you know, I'm I'm definitely not, like, a GPU expert, but I I definitely have looked at the NVIDIA space just to, like, see what they're doing there. And they have PTX, which hooks into LLVM, which is, like, has a very well understood, like, SSA compiler model. So you can while you don't necessarily have what their assembler is compiling down to in the true instructions of architecture, I don't believe for the NVIDIA chips, you do have a very well understood low level single static assignment compiler model that you can reason about, which is saying a lot.

Yeah. And and how's that working out for NVIDIA? I feel I like but my understanding is thanks to Pat Kelsinger's departure of Intel and the abandonment of LaraBe, NVIDIA is doing very well.

That's right.

So I think that there are case that there are another one of these cases for transparency kind of paradoxically because you don't think of NVIDIA as being a transparent company necessarily because the control interfaces are still proprietary. Yeah. But I and I also think that NVIDIA would be even more successful if the control interfaces were although, yeah,

that's bonkers.

Yeah. I guess that's

What's that even mean?

Am I hallucinating that earlier this year NVIDIA said that they're gonna provide an actual open source Linux driver for some segment of their GPUs? Is that true?

We it it I mean, they certainly should. It's certainly if not true, it certainly should be true because I think that they I think NVIDIA's got more to gain. I think they've got more to gain by doing it. I think they would actually be, they would allow their chips to be used in more systems in ways that we and, again, I mean, I don't think I don't think I think they're doing fine

without without my maybe they're listening, though.

Maybe they're listening. Jensen's like, I'll take a note. I could be even okay. Thanks. So we I mean, we think that all of this obviously should be obvious to vendor of silicon because, like, you're helping yourself sell more parts.

Just like anger into bargaining.

And, like, just, like, help me reason with that guy. I know that guy really loses his temper. Like, you're that guy, though. And I do think it's I mean, it's worth, like, if you insist on being opaque, you are forcing people to keep their bag packed. You because you're saying like, no. No. Like, I'm sorry. We're gonna be opaque. There's gonna be a hard interface here. Like, alright.

That's right. I I'm saying I want to invest. I'm saying I wanna build a bunch of software that makes me even more tightly coupled.

I want us to, like, have a bunch of babies together. I want us to lie. I want wanna move in.

And you're saying I get to leave a toothbrush and that's it.

That's it. And it's like, okay. Well, I'm just saying, like, I'm kind of a catch over here. So I don't know. This is where it breaks out.

Right. If you wanna get crazy, you know who to

You know who to call. Exactly. I'm I'm your man. I'm telling you. CEO just for, like, a month. Ninety days. It's like

some elab stuff right now.

I know. Just I know. I'm just I know. It's like Bruce's millions for Intel CEO. This is a very weird kind of Alright. I need to stop. Actually, don't want that, so I need to stop kind of obviously fantasize about it. But hopefully, is like spells it out. Adam, are you sold? Will you will you make your hardware software interface transparent?

Grudgingly. But yes, I I'll overcome my fears and go for it.

Are you gonna stop making this bullshit argument about these legal agreements that we both know don't exist? Let's get the lawyers in.

It's gonna they're nice. They're fun.

They're fun. Exactly. So there we go. That's the that's how we got here.

I think it's great. And I don't know that I think like your email to the ZFS folks.

Yeah.

Yeah. How does it rank in terms of, like, level of

First of all, I I As caustic? Much less caustic, but I I just don't know what's gonna change this industry. Like, I don't know what

No. We're gonna change it. We are gonna change it.

Sweet. Okay.

Yes. This is what's gonna change. We're gonna change it.

Okay.

We, the people, we're gonna change it. I I really do think that we are I I, like, I think because so here's the reason for optimism. The reason for optimism is what this is such a win that when it happens, a la x 86, it just goes supernova.

I'm with you. You need we need that we need that kind of patient zero of this. Like, you need to see for for folks to be able to see what they could be, what could happen.

What could happen.

And then be able to imagine themselves doing it because it will take courage.

Yes. Will take

courage from engineers and courage from leadership. That's right. And even courage from lawyers.

That's right. Some some lawyerly courage. You lawyers are gonna do what they're and the lawyers people I think people blame the lawyers unfairly. The lawyers are gonna, like, leave me out of this. Like, I the the the you signed the agreement. I told you what you're agreeing to and not agreeing to. Like, I got I that was your decision. That was your decision. Exactly. But, yeah, I mean, it it would be and it would be great for, like, an FPGA.

And I I think in the networking space, we can definitely point to what hasn't worked. I don't think we have to make an argument that programmability is valuable, but if you look at programmable data plane networking technologies, none of them have survived. Right? They're all in the the dumpster of time. And so, clearly, something isn't going right.

Absolutely. I mean, that's it. Like, go in like, walk through the cemetery. And, I mean, I did have a line in there that I I did delete encouraging people to take a stroll. Like, any stroll through the cemetery, go read the tombstones in the cemetery, and these are not transparent parts.

I'm optimistic about us achieving our goals. Optimistic about when, we'll see.

I think I heard Rye at some point say that we're we're gonna have these open, these transparent hardware software interfaces because we're gonna be building the ASIC.

I well, I think that we look. I mean, at some point yeah. That that's what takes.

That's what it's gonna take. I mean, I Yep. I build my own little ASICs in my spare time because I I I don't know. That's just how I'm wired. Oh, same.

But yeah.

We'll we'll be doing that eventually.

Yeah. I think in in you know, and and where we talk about it most frequently is the silicon that we've been kinda frustrated with. And, you know, whether that's the and we know it's, like, it's obviously really hard. It's not something we would do casually. But, yeah, it does feel like if if if we have to, that's what we'll do.

Yeah. Thank you very much for having me tonight on this. You know? Like I told you earlier, this gets at the core of why I came to Oxide. So really excited to make a difference here, and looking forward to to living in that future world where operators can actually understand the metal beneath them.

Amen. Here's

to understanding the metal, and here's to transparent hardware software interfaces. Alright. Thanks, everyone.