Podcast: Nomads at the Frontier, Ep. 2 - OCP Global Summit 2024 Reflections

The purpose of the Data Center Frontier/Nomad Futurist: Field Report podcast series -- aka "Nomads at the Frontier" -- is to gather recurring industry insight, expertise and commentary from Nomad Futurist Foundation leaders and ambassadors, firsthand and in the field, as they participate in various industry events.

For episode two of the series, DCF Editor In Chief Matt Vincent moderated a tight yet pithy discussion with Nabeel Mahmood, Co-Founder and Managing Director of Nomad Futurist, and Rob Coyle, Director of Technical Program for the Open Compute Project Foundation, about the newly announced strategic alliance between the two organizations as reflected at the 2024 OCP Global Summit (Oct. 15-17), each taking a shared role in addressing workforce and education challenges in the data center industry.

Noted Nomad Futurist advisor Phill Lawson-Shanks, Chief Innovation Officer for Aligned Data Centers, spoke at the 2024 OCP Global Summit on an executive panel focused on "navigating the AI build-out."

Nomad Futurist is a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization established, per its mission statement, "to demystify the world of digital infrastructure and the related technologies that impact every aspect of our daily lives." Committed to educating youth in underprivileged communities, promoting diversity and inclusion, and opening up opportunities for growth and new career paths, the group says its "primary focus is to empower and inspire younger generations through exposure to the underlying technologies that power our digital world."

Nomad Futurist is known for appointing individuals throughout the data center industry to its ranks of Ambassadors and Advisors, who work to promote the organization's ethos and goals in their professional spheres. Nomad Futurist's members are a pervasive presence in the data center sector, to be found in attendance and presenting at most industry events in the U.S. and abroad.

In today's podcast, Mahmood and Coyle highlight how the significance of the new alliance between their organizations was reflected at OCP 2024, which was attended by an amazing 7,000 people, and discuss future initiatives to foster collaboration.

At the 2024 OCP Global Summit, NVIDIA's Ian Buck discussed the finer points of fostering collaboration in designing data centers for tomorrow's AI workloads. Buck talked on how the adoption of AI is transforming industries and is set to propel a new era of economic growth. His account begins with how in March 2024, the NVIDIA GB200 NVL72 platform was launched as a game-changing new GPU architecture. The heart of the GB200 NVL72 is the NVIDIA GB200 Grace Blackwell Superchip.

At the OCP Global Summit's DC Cooling Technologies Panel, as moderated by iMasons Climate Accord Executive Director Miranda Gardiner: Richard Bonner, CTO, Accelsius discussed universal direct-to-chip cold plates for single- and two-phase cooling; Kai Wang, Signal Integrity Technical Lead, Intel discussed his company's immersion cooling server signal integrity investigations; and Jeff Ca Chen, Thermal Engineer, Wiwynn Corporation dicussed a cutting-edge two-phase cold plate solution for future high-power AI chips.

The podcast discussion also talks about how this year's OCP Global Summit answered the need for standardization in liquid cooling solutions, and how presentations there reflected the growing importance of automation and robotics in response to issues ranging from increasing rack density to labor shortages, especially in hyperscale data centers.

Together on a panel at the 2024 OCP Global Summit, Ryan Olson (Product Design Engineer) - Meta; Victor Escobedo (Grc Lead- Dc Data Security) - Google; and Evan Johnson (Director Of Automation) - Microsoft discussed how data center hyperscalers are scaling at a pace that is unsustainable without the support of efficient physical automation technologies. The panel covered how, in leading this growth, Meta, Google and Microsoft are leveraging robotic inspection and manipulation technologies to enhance efficiency and safety in their data center operations.

This OCP 2024 video exemplifies automation in the hyperscale space.

The OCP presentation with Meta, Google and Microsoft also explored common operational pain points among hyperscalers and highlighted specific use-cases for physical automation solutions in the near- mid- and long-term. By addressing these aspects- the presentation aimed to provide industry leaders with guidance on developing solutions to these operational challenges, which range from remote monitoring and inspection to fully automated server-side storage media replacement.

The podcast talk also addresses the alliance's joint roadmap to formalize strategic directions for the partnership, in the form of OCP-Nomad Futurist announcements planned over the next three to six months to possibly include events such as hackathons, designathons, and other disruptive initiatives to engage both industry insiders and newcomers.

The 2024 OCP Market Impact Study drilled down on the following data center industry topics: growth predictions; AI investments; sustainability; liquid cooling; and edge computing.

Here's a timeline of the podcast's key points:

1:17 - Discussing the alliance between OCP and Nomad Futurist, focusing on workforce and education in the data center industry.
1:40 - Nabeel Mahmood reflects on his experience at OCP 2024, highlighting the attendance of 7,000 people and the importance of the organizations' strategic alliance for addressing human capital deficits.
4:22 - Rob Coyle discusses the maturity of liquid cooling solutions showcased at OCP, emphasizing the need for standardization due to high-density chip demands.
5:05 - Nabeel reflects on the historical significance of liquid cooling technology and its relevance to current AI and machine learning demands.
6:15 - Rob explains the growing importance of automation and robotics in data centers, particularly in response to increasing rack density and labor shortages.
7:47 - Nabeel outlines future initiatives for the partnership, including hackathons and designathons aimed at fostering collaboration and understanding market needs.

Recent DCF Show Podcast Episodes

Did you like this episode? Be sure to subscribe to the Data Center Frontier show at Podbean to receive future episodes on your app.

Keep pace with the fast-moving world of data centers and cloud computing by connecting with Data Center Frontier on LinkedIn, following us on X/Twitter and Facebook, and signing up for our weekly newsletters using the form below.