08/11/2024 What I Read Last Week
#DigitalInfrastructure news: Core Scientific, CoreWeave, Lumen, Groq, HPC
Weekly Edition of curated news about Digital Infrastructure
[Link] Bitcoin miner Core Scientific announced plans to significantly expand its AI business through a $6.7 billion partnership with cloud provider CoreWeave. Core Scientific said the deal will generate an additional $2 billion in revenue over 12 years, on top of an existing arrangement expected to bring in $4.7 billion. In total, the company plans to provide about 382 megawatts of infrastructure to CoreWeave by the first half of 2026, with the possibility of adding 118 megawatts at other Core Scientific sites.
[Link] Lumen announced a significant business expansion driven by the increasing demand for connectivity related to artificial intelligence. The company has secured $5 billion in new business and is in discussions for an additional $7 billion in sales opportunities.
[Link] Physicists at the University of Bath in the UK have developed a new generation of specialty optical fibers designed to meet the anticipated data transfer challenges of the upcoming quantum computing era. Dr. Rusimova and her colleagues describe the state-of-the-art fibers made at Bath, along with other recent and future developments in the emerging field of quantum computing, in an academic paper published in Applied Physics Letters Quantum.
[Link] Mayo Clinic is partnering with startup SandboxAQ to study a new medical device that uses quantum sensing technology and advanced AI algorithms for rapid diagnosis in cardiac care, such as potentially detecting a heart attack.
[Link] AI chipmaker Groq announced it has raised $640 million in a late-stage round of funding led by Blackrock.
[Link] SC24 Explores the Future of Computing: Quantum and HPC Convergence. As AI workloads increase demands on hardware, engineers are exploring hybrid systems that integrate quantum computing with traditional HPC to overcome bottlenecks like network bandwidth and heat density. “Most experts do not think that quantum computers are going to make traditional computers obsolete. Instead, those at the R&D forefront envision fully integrated systems with a hybrid architecture, a system where information passes back and forth between quantum computers and HPC systems, depending on the task at hand.”
[Link] New light source emits bright, entangled photons for quantum communication. A pan-European, Asian, and South American research team has developed a new light source that emits exceptionally bright, entangled photons, which is crucial for advancing quantum communication and enabling ultra-secure data transmission.
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