Humble Beginnings to Now: An interview with Bill Carter, Fellow Emeritus of the OCP Foundation

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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