Learn how this software engineering manager and his team in Gdansk are helping both customers – and the planet – by accelerating efficient and flexible technology solutions with reduced hardware waste.
Meet Mieszko Dropinski, a software engineering manager in the Data Center Group (DCG) at Intel Poland. His team’s focus? Designing an all-new data center architecture and enabling its adoption throughout the ecosystem.
We recently spoke with Mieszko about his career, positively impacting the environment, and what makes Intel Poland a great place to work.
What does your group do?
DCG is designing an all-new optimized architecture for data centers with systems and software that increase efficiency and utilization of hardware assets. We achieve that by changing the traditional server-in-a-box paradigm. We disaggregate the compute, memory, network and storage resources and enable software-defined composability that can be tailored to any workload. By pooling only what you’ll need for the job, we achieve greater usage of each hardware component. We call this architecture Intel® Rack Scale Design (Intel® RSD).
Intel RSD allows full disaggregation of each of these resources. This way, if you need to increase the capacity of your data center, you will not need to add entirely new servers, only more of the specific resources required for your application, for example, more storage, more compute, or more accelerator cards.
My group touches all the technologies used in the data center, which are pretty much all the technologies available in the market. We gain cross-domain expertise in each of the data center-related areas like storage, compute, networking, and memory.
What is the purpose and impact of this technology?
For data center operators, the impact will be seen in the lowered cost of services delivered by more efficient data centers.
With Intel RSD architecture, your data center will dynamically allocate the exact amount of resources needed by a specific workload. The effect of this dynamic allocation is that your data center will function more efficiently to reach its maximum potential.
On top of that, when you need to refresh your data center, which typically happens every three to five years, you will only need to refresh the components that require renewal due to their individual lifecycle—be it storage, accelerators, new processors, etc.—and not all the servers or platforms. This will have direct impact on the amount of electronic waste which is being generated through the refresh of data centers across the globe.
Hardware disaggregation may also allow the data center to use less power and reduce the amount of greenhouse gases directly related to global warming. So, at scale, this technology may even have a positive impact on the global environment.
What makes you proud of your team and being part of DCG?
We are particularly good at researching and learning new technologies, because we’re always evolving. As I mentioned, we aim to have all the data center resources disaggregated. This means that when a new technology appears on the market, we enable it in our architecture and software. So, we need research it, build expertise, and then enable it in the new Intel RSD systems. Each time we release a new software or solution, it contains some of the newest features and technologies in the data center market.
Our technologies are changing the world. Ideally, in five to ten years, it will have a worldwide impact and all the big multinationals will develop their data centers based on our new architecture. This is what puts a big smile on my face when I come to work—realizing that the team I’m part of is really changing the world.
What would the ideal candidate joining your team bring to the table?
We develop a large variety of technologies and products here in Poland, and there is a lot of room for growth in the next couple of years for people with multiple levels of expertise—students, college grads, and experienced architects. We will be hiring engineers, managers, project managers, etc.
We are looking for people specialized in all the resources used by data centers. We develop our software in multiple layers, and multiple technologies, so we start with C++, then we develop some components on Java and in Python and C#. So, basically, we hire people who have specialized in any of these four languages. In terms of operating systems, we're mainly using Linux environment, but there are also some small areas in which we do use Windows operating systems. We enable employees to learn and gain experience of a large variety of technologies.
Ultimately, we look for people who are willing to learn a lot, who are open to change, who want to work in a fast-paced environment, and who are passionate about new technologies. People who want to explore, discover, develop, and create value for our customers and the whole environment.
So, if they have an open personality, are keen to work with new technologies, and like to learn, they do not necessarily need to have a lot of experience to join us.
Interested in opportunities at Intel Poland? Check out available openings here: https://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/jobs/locations/poland.html
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