12/15/24 What I Read Last Week
#DigitalInfrastructure news: Google, Quantum Computing, Optical Interconnect, Cologix, HPE, Neuromorphic computing
Weekly Edition of curated news about Digital Infrastructure
[Link] Google had a BIG announcement last week, with Willow - its latest quantum computing chip; noting two major achievements. First, Google says Willow has achieved what is known as "below threshold" error correction, which means that as the number of qubits increases, the error rate decreases exponentially. Second, they claimed Willow performed a standard benchmark computation in under five minutes that would take one of today’s fastest supercomputers 10 septillion (that is, 1025) years.
[Link] Optical interconnect solutions Ayar Labs announced it has secured $155 million in financing led by Advent Global Opportunities and Light Street Capital, and strategic investors AMD Ventures, Intel Capital, and NVIDIA. Ayar Labs has developed the industry’s first in-package optical I/O solution to replace electrical I/O that is standards-based, commercial-ready, and optimized for AI training and inference.
[Link] AVAIO Digital Partners has signed an agreement to purchase a 452-acre site in Appomattox County, Virginia, where it plans to develop a $3 billion data center campus powered by 300 MW of green energy, leveraging its strategic location and zoning for rapid construction.
[Link] Cologix announced its collaboration with Coevolution, an AI infrastructure edge cloud service provider, to expand GPU-as-a-Service (GPUaaS) deployments from Cologix’s VAN3 data center in Vancouver, Canada.
[Link] Hewlett Packard Enterprise has been contracted to develop "Blue Lion," a €250 million high-performance supercomputer for the Leibniz Supercomputing Center, which will begin operations in 2027 to enhance research capabilities in Bavaria and support national scientific projects.
[Link] BrainChip announced that it was awarded a development contract for $1.8M from the Air Force Research Laboratory (AFRL) on neuromorphic radar signaling processing technologies. The contract is a development effort expansion after successfully demonstrating radar processing algorithms running on BrainChip’s Akida commercial off-the-shelf (COTS) neuromorphic hardware.
[Link] Meta's $10 Billion AI Data Center in Louisiana: Meta has announced a significant investment in a $10 billion data center in Richland Parish, Louisiana, which will span 4 million square feet and cover 2,250 acres.
[Link] Yondr Group has secured a 4.5-acre site in Toronto to develop its first Canadian data center. The three-story 27MW data center is planned to be online in mid-2026.
[Link] The Midcontinent Independent System Operator’s (MISO) board has approved a $21.9 billion long-range transmission plan. In November, MISO president and chief operating officer Clair Moeller contended that data centers could begin to pay for gas-fired generation to power its facilities in the short term as a bridging mechanism to low-carbon energy sources. Moeller argued that due to rapid buildouts of data center operators, utilities should explore every avenue possible to meet their power needs.
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