(by Ron Herardian): Whenever new pieces of technology are introduced, the first question most engineers ask is how they can be used to make things run better and more efficiently. At the Open Compute Summit’s hardware hackathon, we got the chance to answer that question and were thrilled by what we found. The team I worked with was a diverse group representing a range of companies, and for the most part, we had never met before. Our team was comprised of Andreas Olofsson from Adapteva, Inc., Peter Mooshammer, formerly with IBM, Jon Ehlen from Facebook, and Dimitar Boyn from I/O Switch Technologies, Inc. The team also included Rob Markovic, an independent consultant, and myself, a computer hobbyist and hacker. Although Rob and I were both acquainted with Dimitar from I/O Switch – but not with one another – none of the other team members had previously met and no plans existed prior to the event. Nonetheless, there was immediate synergy and an ambitious plan took shape during an hour of brainstorming. READ MORE