In this special episode of the Open Compute Project Podcast, host Rob Coyle sits down with Bill Carter, Fellow Emeritus and former CTO of the OCP Foundation, for a deep and personal conversation spanning the entire history of OCP — from its scrappy beginnings to its position today as a force in global infrastructure innovation.

Highlights Include:

* The Birth of OCP: How Facebook, Intel, and Rackspace sparked a hardware revolution in a curtained-off corner of a San Jose colo.

* Vanity-Free Computing: The story behind the radical idea that simplicity, not flash, drives scale.

* Rack to Reality: The evolution of Open Rack — from triple-bus bar designs to a global standard reshaped by collaboration.

* White Box Networking Breakthroughs: Why disaggregated switches became one of OCP’s most disruptive contributions.

* Collaboration Over Competition: The unlikely alliances between rivals like Intel and AMD that propelled early specs like Decathlete and Roadrunner.

* Specs That Stuck — and Some That Didn't: Bill breaks down the difference between thriving standards and those that fell flat.

* OCP’s Global Footprint: What Europe and Asia bring to the future of open hardware, sustainability, and sovereign tech.

* What’s Next: Lessons from the past and a look forward at where OCP is headed — especially in the AI, modular, and liquid-cooled future.

Whether you're new to open hardware or a long-time community member, this is a must-listen look at how open collaboration can reshape an entire industry — told by someone who helped build it.

Chapters:

00:00:00 — Intro

00:02:36 — The Birth of OCP: Why Facebook broke away from traditional server designs

00:08:44 — Bill Joins the Movement: How Intel became an early OCP catalyst

00:22:13 — Network Disaggregation: The white box switch that shook the industry

00:28:49 — Decathlete & Roadrunner: Competing specs, shared goals

00:34:12 — OCP Inspired vs Accepted: What it means and why it matters

00:43:10 — The Power of Connector Standardization: Dripless and universal quick disconnects

00:50:05 — Modular Momentum: The rise of DCM and the value of early collaboration

01:02:08 — What's Next for OCP: AI, sustainability, and global community growth

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