10/06/2024 What I Read Last Week
#DigitalInfrastructure news: Yotta conference, Equinix, Microsoft, CoreWeave, AI, Quantum Computing
Weekly Edition of curated news about Digital Infrastructure
I wish I could be in Las Vegas this week - for the Yotta Digital Infrastructure event. Their ‘Big Themes for 2024’ list sounds like a summary of what I try to cover in this Substack: Deploying AI Compute, Scaling Digital Infrastructure Sustainably, Network - Everywhere all at once, Digital Infrastructure investment forum, data center of the future, Intersection of data and energy, deep dive-intelligent infrastructure, and cloud in 2030. The keynote speakers for this event are also impressive: Dean Nelson, Chris Crosby, Renee James… and more.
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[Link] Equinix forms a $15 Billion-plus joint venture with Canada Pension and GIC to expand hyperscale data centers in the U.S. They plan to purchase land to build new xScale facilities on multiple greater-than-100-MW campuses.
[Link] Cisco is set to invest in CoreWeave, valuing the cloud services provider at $23 billion, according to a Bloomberg News report on Thursday, citing people familiar with the matter.
[Link] Microsoft has committed to investing €4.3 billion ($4.75bn) in expanding its cloud and artificial intelligence data center infrastructure in Italy. Just a few months ago the company announced the upcoming availability of its first cloud region in Italy, consisting of three data centers in the Lombardy region. That region is a part of Ambizione Italia, a five-year, $1.5 billion investment plan that launched in 2020.
[Link] Oracle revealed that it plans to open a cloud region in Malaysia, where it will be offering more than 150 infrastructure and cloud services, including Oracle's AI offerings.
[Link] Google is investing 36 billion Thai baht, or $1 billion, into Thailand to build a new data center and expand its cloud infrastructure.
[Link] Verizon and Vertical Bridge announced they have entered into an agreement for Vertical Bridge to obtain the exclusive rights to lease, operate and manage 6,339 wireless communications towers across all 50 states and Washington, D.C. from subsidiaries of Verizon or approximately $3.3 billion, including certain commercial benefits.
[Link] BrainChip introduced the Akida Pico, a low power acceleration co-processor that enables the creation of very compact, ultra-low power, portable and intelligent devices for wearable and sensor integrated AI into consumer, healthcare, IoT, defense and wake-up applications. Built on the Akida2 event-based computing platform configuration engine, the Pico provides a power-efficient footprint for waking up microcontrollers or larger system processors, with a neural network to filter out false alarms to preserve power consumption until an event is detected.
[Link] Fujitsu and Supermicro have announced a strategic collaboration aimed at developing green AI computing technology and liquid-cooled data center solutions. This partnership, revealed last week, will focus on creating a platform utilizing Fujitsu's upcoming Arm-based "FUJITSU-MONAKA" processor.
[Link] Giga Byte announced its initial wave of GIGABYTE servers that support the full stack of AmpereOne family of processors. The AmpereOne processors are designed for cloud-native computing, feature up to 192 custom designed Ampere cores, DDR5 memory, and 128 lanes of PCIe Gen5 per socket.
[Link] electrek - Hell Froze Over… The US Department of Energy (DOE) announces $1.5B for four transmission projects – including connecting the Texas grid to the Southeast grids for the first time ever.
[Link] The future of Quantum AI. Significant progress has been achieved in both AI and quantum technology over the past five years. This Forbes article showcases notable advancements in each field, explores the anticipated convergence hinted at by key industry leaders, proposes a potential direction for the industry, and concludes with the implications of these trends.
[Link] Vertiv introduced Vertiv EnergyCore battery cabinets. Factory assembled with LFP (Lithium-Iron-Phosphate) battery modules and Vertiv’s internally-powered battery management system.
[Link] Researchers from the Autonomous University of Madrid used digital quantum computers to simulate the creation of particles in an expanding universe. In a recently published preprint on arXiv, they demonstrate how quantum computers can simulate the creation of particles in a curved, expanding universe—pushing the limits of both quantum computation and cosmology.
[Link] IonQ demonstrates remote ion-ion entanglement… a second out of four significant milestones required to develop photonic interconnects. IonQ’s R&D team entangled two trapped ion qubits from separate trap wells using entangled photons to achieve these results.
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