For this episode of the Data Center Frontier Show Podcast, DCF Editor in Chief Matt Vincent reads down a synopsis of Data Center Frontier's top 5 most popular editorial stories of the Second Quarter by pageviews.
Our site's top 5 most-read stories for Q2 2024, as cited in this episode, are as follows:
1. The Gigawatt Data Center Campus is Coming
By RICH MILLER -- The Internet is entering an era of gigawatt-scale data center campuses to power artificial intelligence (AI), according to developers and industry groups, who say this approach provides the best opportunity to support AI workloads with renewable energy. Hyperscale tech companies are already seeking sites for campuses that can support a gigawatt of electric power capacity, equal to 1,000 megawatts or 1 billion watts, according to speakers at April’s Data Center World conference. Real estate industry sources affirm that tech titans are actively discussing gigawatt-scale campuses, citing the massive compute needed to support AI models, as well as the desire to find locations that can support many years of future growth.
2. IEA Study Sees AI, Cryptocurrency Doubling Data Center Energy Consumption by 2026
By SEAN BUCKLEY -- Data centers have the potential to double their energy usage by 2026, according to a recent International Energy Agency (IEA) report. IEA forecasts that data centers’ total electricity consumption could reach more than 1,000 terawatt-hours (TWh) in 2026. This demand is roughly equivalent to the electricity consumption of Japan,” said the report, which added. “Updated regulations and technological improvements, including on efficiency, will be crucial to moderate the surge in energy consumption from data centers.” Looking into how AI and cryptocurrencies, hosted inside data centers, are raising energy consumption, the IEA said that taken together, both technologies will double facilities' electricity usage by 2026.
3. Land and Expand: New Data Center Developments by Meta, T5, Prime, Ardent, Tract, Microsoft
This article gathers some of the new and notable developments about which we’ve been reading lately, including new sites, land acquisitions and campus expansions from hyperscale and colocation data center operators. In brief: Meta in May announced that it will build a new $800 million data center campus in Montgomery, Alabama. T5 Data Centers is building big in the Suburban Chicago market with the addition of a 480-megawatt campus in Grayslake, Illinois. Prime, active in both America and Europe, announced it would move into the Phoenix market with a five-building, 66.5-acre campus in the suburb of Avondale. Colocation provider Ardent Data Centers (Germany) has broken ground on construction an upgrade to its Pittsburgh data center to allow for additional power and maximized energy capacity. Tract has broken ground on construction of its Peru Shelf Technology Park, an 810 MW data center campus project in Storey County, Nevada. Microsoft has announced a $3.3 billion investment in the state of Wisconsin to spur artificial intelligence (AI) technology innovation and economic growth.
4. Equinix Puts Down $25M In Data Center Nuclear Power Deal with Sam Altman's Oklo
Perceptions of the palpable convergence of the nuclear energy and data center industries were already running high in Q1 after news of Amazon's purchase last month of a 900 megawatt (MW)+ nuclear energy data center campus in Pennsylvania. A month later came word that industry leader and pioneer Equinix wants to purchase hundreds of megawatts of power from Oklo, the California-based nuclear fission startup backed by OpenAI founder and CEO Sam Altman, which aims to manufacture small modular reactor (SMR) technology for data center and industrial energy generation.
5. Prologis Launches $25B Dedicated Data Center Arm Led by Compass Co-founder Chris Curtis
Reporting on March 6 in The Registry, a chronicler of the U.S. Pacific Northwest Real Estate market, stated that Prologis, one of the main owners of warehouse spaces and logistics in the United States, has brought on data center industry veteran Chris Curtis, co-founder of Compass Datacenters, to lead its new $25 billion dedicated data center development arm. Appointed global head of data centers for Prologis, Curtis will draw on his wealth of industry expertise and experience to guide that company along its path to expanding as an outright player in the hyperscale and cloud data center industry. The company comes by its U.S. data center ambitions honestly. As previously reported by DCF's Rich Miller, Prologis has been partnering with Skybox Datacenters since 2021 to develop data centers in major U.S. markets including Chicago and Texas.
Recent DCF Show Podcast Episodes
- Phillip Koblence, COO and Co-Founder, NYI; Co-Founder, Nomad Futurist
- Data Center Construction and Dallas Market Talk with Burns & McDonnell
- Data Center Frontier's Rich Miller Talks Gigawatt MegaCampus Predictions
- ZutaCore Executives Recap NVIDIA GTC Data Center Liquid Cooling Playbook
- NVIDIA, Equinix, JetCool Talk Data Center Liquid Cooling, GTC 2024 AI Conference Trends
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