02/11/2024 What I Read Last Week
#DigitalInfrastructure news: Mystery Iowa data center, OneNeck, AMD, Schneider
Weekly Edition of curated news about Digital Infrastructure
[Link] Last week it was Microsoft buying 377 acres in Des Moines, this week it is 890 acres in Cedar Rapids. Why Iowa? Because Iowa is the best place to build data centers. Inexpensive power, lots of renewable energy, is safe from most natural disasters, and has an awesome workforce. This time a mystery company is reportedly looking to build a $576 data center on the south side of Cedar Rapids. An unnamed company (represented by developer Heaviside LLC) is seeking city and state financial incentives. The site, at 76th Ave. and Edgewood Road - is just north of the airport, just down the road from a new BAE Systems (defense aerospace) office, and just south of a large ADM 🌽 processing plant. I’m still digging, to see who this data center build could be for. If you know something; or even have a clue you can tell me - please let me know. #YIMBY
[Link] Oneneck announced a new strategic partnership with Network as a Service provider Megaport. The Megaport SDN enables private connections between data centers and a vast network of endpoint connections, including public clouds, SaaS solution providers like Salesforce and SAP, and over 850 data centers worldwide. OneNeck will integrate Megaport into its Minneapolis, Des Moines, and Madison data centers.
[Link] OpenAI CEO Sam Altman is believed to be seeking as much as $5 trillion to $7 trillion for a chip venture to build a network of chip plants, or fabs, that established semiconductor makers will run.
[Link] AMD launches Embedded+, a new architectural solution that combines AMD Ryzenâ„¢ Embedded processors with Versal adaptive SoCs onto a single integrated board to deliver scalable and power-efficient solutions that accelerate time-to-market for original design manufacturer partners.
[Link] Energy Changemakers: How to Make Virtual Power Plants Available to More of Us - an interview with CPower CEO Michael Smith. A virtual power plant aggregates distributed energy resources (DERs) to serve the grid in return for payment that helps reduce energy costs for the customers that host the DERs.
[Link] Schneider Electric collaborates with Intel and RedHat to release the Distributed Control Node (DCN) software framework. Schneider says the framework aligns with the Open Process Automation Forum (OPAF) goals and enables industrial companies to move to a software-defined, plug-and-produce solution.
[Link] The US’s largest solar + battery storage project, Edwards & Sanborn, has come online in Kern County, California. It comprises 875 megawatts of solar and 3,320 megawatt-hours of energy storage.
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