SYSTEM Cited by 1 source
Crush (Dropbox 7th-gen compute platform)¶
Definition¶
Crush is Dropbox's 7th-generation compute platform, replacing the 6th-gen Cartman platform from ~2020. Rolled out 2025 as part of the same hardware refresh that introduced systems/dexter (database), systems/sonic (storage), systems/gumby and systems/godzilla (GPU tiers).
Key specs (vs Cartman gen-6)¶
| Dimension | Cartman (gen-6) | Crush (gen-7) | Change |
|---|---|---|---|
| CPU | AMD EPYC 7642 "Rome" | AMD EPYC 9634 "Genoa" | Same vendor, next gen |
| Cores per socket | 48 | 84 | +75% |
| RAM per server | 256 GB DDR4 | 512 GB DDR5 | 2× capacity, higher BW |
| Local disk | — | NVMe gen5 | Generation uplift |
| NIC | 25 Gb | 100 Gb | 4× |
| Chassis | 1U "pizza box" | 1U "pizza box" | Unchanged |
| Servers per rack | 46 | 46 | Unchanged |
| SPECintrate | — | +~40% vs gen-6 | Workload-level |
Selection methodology¶
Dropbox evaluated 100+ processors against four criteria:
- Maximum system throughput (server- and rack-level).
- Minimum per-process latency.
- Best price/performance for Dropbox workloads.
- Balanced I/O + memory bandwidth.
Benchmarking: SPECintrate (multi-threaded workloads), cross-checked with perf/watt and perf/core. The 84-core Genoa won both max-throughput and strong-per-core axes.
Workloads¶
- Containerized services — the +75% core count improves bin- packing efficiency for tenant/service placement.
- General compute — stateless services, frontends, proxies, most of Dropbox's service catalog.
Relationship to Dexter¶
Crush and systems/dexter share the same vendor platform (same server SKU, same firmware baseline) — realized as a design-time decision that compute and database requirements overlapped enough to avoid maintaining two vendor stacks. Dexter differentiates by using a single-socket configuration (vs Crush's dual-socket), eliminating inter-socket latency for OLTP workloads where replication lag dominates tails.
Relationship to Gumby¶
systems/gumby is Crush + PCIe GPU slots — a Crush variant, not a separate platform. Workload-wise it serves Dash-style mixed-inference GPU workloads.
Seen in¶
- sources/2025-08-08-dropbox-seventh-generation-server-hardware — 7th-gen hardware introduction; Crush's role as the compute baseline.