On the Metal: Amir Michael

On this episode of On the Metal, we interview Amir Michael. Join us as we listen to stories of growing up and coming up in Silicon Valley, from answering a Craigslist ad during the Dot Com Bust for a company with a funny name, through starting a project at Facebook that became an industry-wide movement -- with many exciting tales in between!

Show notes and highlights

You can find Amir on Facebook at facebook.com/amir and on Twitter at twitter.com/digiamir.

• Silcon wafers: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wafer_(electronics)
• The 'Turbo button': https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turbo_button
• BBSs: https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2016/11/the-lost-civilization-of-dial-up-bulletin-board-systems/506465/
• Turbo Pascal: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turbo_Pascal
• Anders Hejlsberg: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anders_Hejlsberg
• UCSB's Basic Undergraduate RISC Processor (BURP): https://www.ece.ucsb.edu/~strukov/ece152BSpring2012/Labs/Lab2.pdf
• Thermal grease: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thermal_grease
• 'The Datacenter as Computer: Designing Warehouse-Scale Machines' https://www.morganclaypool.com/doi/pdf/10.2200/S00874ED3V01Y201809CAC046
• Sun Modular Data Center, née Project Blackbox: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sun_Modular_Datacenter
• Google Modular Data Center: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_Modular_Data_Center
• SPD: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Serial_presence_detect
• DRAM training: https://www.systemverilog.io/ddr4-initialization-and-calibration
• Origins of 19' rack: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/19-inch_rack#Overview_and_history
• Open Compute Project: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_Compute_Project
• Facebook Wedge switch: https://engineering.fb.com/data-center-engineering/facebook-open-switching-system-fboss-and-wedge-in-the-open/
• Backblaze drive reports: https://www.backblaze.com/blog/backblaze-hard-drive-stats-q1-2019/
• Busbar: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Busbar