Chipmaker AMD has developed a server platform that borrows some design features from servers Facebook designed for its own data centers but open-sourced through the Open Compute Project.

The platform, AMD Open 3.0, is a modified version of the Facebook Open-Compute server design called V2, a design AMD was involved in. Open 3.0 is powered by AMD’s Opteron 6300 series processors.

Its main difference from traditional servers is its modularity. A single design can be configured differently for different purposes, including for High Performance Computing (HPC), general-purpose server and storage-server applications.

AMD has a recommended configuration for each of the three use cases.

Bob Ogrey, AMD fellow and cloud technology evangelist, who was deeply involved in the platform’s design, said AMD had co-authored the design specification together with engineers from Fidelity Investments and Goldman Sachs. Both financial-services companies are Open Compute members and are currently evaluating Open 3.0 for use in their own data centers.

User-driven server design is the future
A lot of the design work was guided by requirements of the financial-services customers, as the idea was originally to create an Open Compute server for the financial sector. “We talked about Open Compute for financial services,” where companies want to deploy applications in the cloud but also have HPC needs, Ogrey said.

“We’ve taken what pretty much was a customer-defined platform infrastructure,” he said about the design process. AMD then created the spec and refined it jointly with the end users.

This currently rare approach to server design is what Ogrey believes will be an increasingly common one. “This was the first time I’d worked together with anybody – outside of Facebook – on designs for their data center,” he says, adding that “this is the beginning of multiples.”

Companies running large data centers all have special needs. The platform AMD has come up with has been tested across different SKUs, so a board by one manufacturer can be “popped” into a system by another one.

Another major advantage is a common management framework across nodes from different suppliers.

AMD expects production Open 3.0 systems built by original design manufacturers (ODMs) Tyan and Quanta Computer available through Avnet and Penguin Computing before the end of the first calendar quarter. The reason AMD has gone with the ODMs instead of the traditional server vendors (such as Dell, HP or IBM), also referred to as Original Equipment Manufacturers, or OEMs, is the former group is better at following directions.

Potential customers of AMD’s Open Compute servers, such as Fidelity and Goldman, want the feature-specific designs, which can be reproduced across multiple manufacturers. “If you look at traditional enterprise servers today, that model doesn’t exist,” Ogrey said.

There is not an HP, IBM or Dell system that works exactly the same as the others, he explained. “They [each] have their own value-add.”

Ogrey could not say whether Fidelity and Goldman had definite plans to actually deploy Open 3.0 servers in their data centers.

“We believe they will,” he said. “That’s our hopes and goals, dreams and aspirations.”

Representatives from Fidelity and Goldman declined to comment for this article.

A few specs
The AMD Open 3.0 motherboard is designed to fit into 1U, 1.5U, 2U or 3U rack servers. It can be installed in standard 19-inch data center racks or in OCP-designed Open Racks.

Each of the two Opteron processors has 12 memory sockets. Each board has six Serial ATA connections, a dual-channel gigabit Ethernet Network Interface Card (NIC) with integrated management, up to four PCI Express expansion slots, a mezzanine connector for custom module solutions, two serial ports and two USB ports.