Spotify is in the middle of a big shift in modern computing: moving from x86 processors to Google’s new ARM-based Axion chips. This isn’t just a hardware swap — it’s a disruptive change with ripple effects across performance, efficiency, and sustainability.In this episode, we sit down with Mo Farhat, Group Product Manager for Google Compute Engine, to unpack what makes ARM so game-changing in the data center. From the history of ARM’s rise, to the challenges of designing chips for hyperscale workloads, to why this transition matters for the future of cloud computing, Mo offers a look inside how Axion was built and why now is the tipping point for ARM.If you’ve ever wondered what really powers the services you use every day — and why Spotify is betting on Axion — this is the episode to listen to.Learn more about Google Axion Processors: Leading processors custom-built for cloud workloadsIntroducing Google Axion Processors, our new Arm-based CPUsC4A VMs now GA: Our first custom Arm-based Axion CPUAxion in action: Unlock price-performance and efficiency with Google Axion VMsThe Impact of Google Cloud’s Arm-Based Axion Chip: ExplainedRead what else we’re nerding out about on the Spotify Engineering Blog: engineering.atspotify.comYou should follow us on Twitter @SpotifyEng, LinkedIn, and YouTube!
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30: Building AiKA: Spotify’s AI Knowledge Assistant
Hear about the journey behind building Spotify’s AI knowledge assistant, aka AiKA — from hack projects to internal chatbot, to enterprise developer tool.While general purpose chatbots are being used everywhere, they often fall short when it comes to navigating company-specific information — like which internal policy applies to your team or where to find the doc someone shared in Slack three months ago. That’s why we built AiKA. Using retrieval-augmented generation (RAG), AiKA taps into Spotify’s internal knowledge sources to provide employees with context-aware answers right when they need them.Host and principal engineer Dave Zolotusky is joined by senior engineers Majd Salman and Jofre Mateu to discuss AiKA’s evolution from a bunch of hack week experiments to a unified chatbot platform now used weekly by 25% of Spotify’s employees and 87% of our developers. They share why RAG is the right approach for making an internal chatbot accurate and fast, how AiKA has cut the time it takes to resolve internal support requests by 47%, and how we’re extending AiKA’s agentic capabilities with MCP.🤖 Want to see how AiKA can supercharge knowledge sharing where you work? Sign up to try Spotify Portal for Backstage at: https://backstage.spotify.com/try-portal/ Learn more about Spotify’s AI knowledge assistant:Our KubeCon talk: Leveraging Internal Knowledge: Building AiKA at SpotifyThe New Stack: Introducing AiKA: Backstage Portal AI Knowledge AssistantTechCrunch: Backstage access: Spotify’s dev tools side-hustle is growing legsSpotify’s Backstage Blog: AI knowledge assistant and data plugins coming to Spotify PortalRead what else we’re nerding out about on the Spotify Engineering Blog: engineering.atspotify.comYou should follow us on Twitter @SpotifyEng, LinkedIn, and YouTube!
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29: Deploying Our New Typeface: Spotify Mix
Last year Spotify launched a big update to the app: a new typeface. For most of us, changing fonts is easy. It’s just a dropdown menu away. But creating a whole new typeface and then rolling it out across 45 unique platforms, and over 2,000 types of devices spread across 200 brands – that’s not so simple. This brand new font is called Spotify Mix and it was made just for Spotify. From playlists to microsites and billboards, it’s what you’ll see everywhere you see Spotify, representing the brand’s distinctive voice. In this episode, we’ll get into the technical and aesthetic challenges that go into creating and deploying a new typeface as well as what made its release possible: Spotify’s internal design system, known as Encore. Host and principal engineer Dave Zolotusky speaks with two people on Spotify’s design platform team who helped bring Spotify Mix to the world: an iOS engineer and “Spotify’s one and only typographer” — a designer who specializes in type and fonts.Learn more about Spotify Mix and our internal design system, Encore:Introducing Spotify Mix, Our New and Exclusive Font — SpotifyCreating coherence: How Spotify’s design system goes beyond platforms — FigmaDesign Systems Podcast, Ep. 84: Digital typography: Suggesting, not dictatingRead what else we’re nerding out about on the Spotify Engineering Blog: engineering.atspotify.comYou should follow us on Twitter @SpotifyEng, LinkedIn, and YouTube!
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28: The CNCF Turns 10
Ever heard of Kubernetes? Envoy? Prometheus? You probably have. But what you may not know is that these projects are managed and sustained by the Cloud Native Computing Foundation, aka the CNCF. Cloud native computing allows IT and software to move faster, and open source projects are essential to furthering these innovations and keeping them accessible for everyone. The CNCF is dedicated to fostering and sustaining an ecosystem of open source, vendor-neutral projects. In fact, Spotify donated Backstage to the CNCF in September 2020 and it moved to incubating maturity level March 2022. To celebrate the CNCF’s 10th year, host and principal engineer Dave Zolotusky speaks with Chris Aniszczyk, Chief Technology Officer at the CNCF to better understand what an open source foundation is, what it does, and why it matters so much to the developer community. Plus, we’ll get a sneak peek at KubeCon + CloudNativeCon Europe.Learn more about Chris Aniszczyk, the CNCF, and open source:NerdOut@Spotify, Ep.02: Open IssuesNerdOut@Spotify, Ep.11: Open Source Work Is WorkCloud Native Computing Foundation blogChris Aniszczyk on TwitterChris's Open Source Velocity ReportsCertified Backstage Associate certification and other certificationsRegister for KubeCon + CloudNativeCon LondonRead what else we’re nerding out about on the Spotify Engineering Blog: engineering.atspotify.comYou should follow us on Twitter @SpotifyEng, LinkedIn, and YouTube!
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Join us for Wizards, Portals, and Spotify for Backstage
Register for Spotify’s roadmap webinar on April 30, 2024 — and see what’s coming next from Spotify for Backstage, the open source platform for building internal developer portals. We’ll show you our latest developer tools, including a sneak peek at new Spotify Plugins for Backstage and a first-look at Spotify Portal for Backstage — a full-featured developer portal that is quick and easy for any engineering org to adopt. See demos from Spotify’s team and learn how to apply for the private beta — work with us to build the next great developer portal: yours!
Host and principal engineer Dave Zolotusky has a quick chat with Helen Greul, head of engineering for Backstage at Spotify, about the event. They talk about the CNCF’s recent BackstageCon in Paris, the growing popularity of the Backstage platform, and why the roadmap webinar on April 30 isn’t one to miss for fans of developer experience and wizardry.
Register for the April 30 roadmap webinar
Learn more about Spotify and Backstage
Listen to Ep. 01: What Is Backstage?
Watch the 2-minute Backstage explainer video
Read what else we’re nerding out about on the Spotify Engineering Blog: engineering.atspotify.com
You should follow us on Twitter @SpotifyEng, LinkedIn, and YouTube!
NerdOut@Spotify is a technology podcast produced by the nerds at Spotify and made for the nerd inside all of us. Hear from Spotify engineers about challenging tech problems and get a firsthand look into what we're doing, what we're building, and what we’re nerding out about at Spotify every day.
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