5 Notable Data Center Links, Sept. 20
Liquid Cooling Comes to the Network, NVIDIA’s Ethernet traction and more
Each week I curate 5 links from the data center sector that I find particularly interesting, with my commentary on why they merit your attention.
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5 Notable Links.
Arista Developing Liquid-Cooled Network Switches - Liquid cooling is coming to the network. Arista Networks is developing an Open Rack v3 based data center server rack that supports approximately 120kW of power and house liquid-cooled AI fabric switches. “We are designing fully liquid-cooled switch racks that offer up to 32 of these fabric switches with patch panels, and management switches, and power shelves,” Arista co-founder Andreas Bechtolsheim said during the analyst day.”
Inside the World’s Most Powerful AI Datacenter - 20-foot wide cooling fans. A 500-yard long storage facility. Two floors of racks packed with NVIDIA GPUs. On Thursday Microsoft shared details about its candidate for the title of the largest AI powerhouse, the Fairwater campus in Mount Pleasant, Wisconsin. I shared this on LinkedIn, but there’s LOTS to unpack, so if you haven’t seen it, it’s worth checking out
NVIDIA Takes Commanding Lead in Datacenter Ethernet Switching - NVIDIA rules the world of GPUs, and that dominance is also boosting its Spectrum-X Ethernet switch, new data shows. “The magnitude of the Nvidia Ethernet leap is dramatic, just as has been the jump in compute for Nvidia over the past two years,” writes Timothy Prickett Morgan at The Next Platform, noting that while Cisco remains the top overall Ethernet player, Nvidia rules the AI roost. “Nvidia’s Ethernet business is now larger than that of Arista Networks, which has been dogging Cisco in the datacenter for the past decade and a half.”
Soluna Secures $100 Million Facility from Generate Capital - In coming weeks I’ll be profiling a number of developers that initially built crypto infrastructure but are now transitioning to AI/HPC data centers. Soluna is in this category, operating modular data centers powered by stranded renewable energy. “We believe this deal with Generate primes Soluna for scale,” said John Belizaire, CEO of Soluna.
How Are Data Centers Taxed? - There’s growing scrutiny of tax breaks for data centers. Although data centers get tax incentives in many states, they also pay millions of dollars - and sometimes hundreds of millions of dollars - in taxes to state, county and local entities. This DCK piece offers a useful breakdown of the different taxes paid by data centers.
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