Data Center News Roundup: Nvidia Launches Blackwell GPUs, Google Heads to Missouri

With data center news moving faster than ever, we want to make it easy for industry professionals to cut through the noise and find the most important stories of the week.

The Data Center Knowledge News Roundup brings you the latest news and developments across the data center industry – from investments and mergers to security threats and industry trends.

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Blackwell Chip Launch 

Nvidia dominated the tech news headlines this week after the hardware heavyweight announced its next-generation Blackwell architecture GPUs, new supercomputers, and new software that will make it faster and easier for enterprises to build and run generative AI and other energy-intensive applications. 

Data Center Knowledge writer Wylie Wong was at Nvidia’s GTC developer conference to get the lowdown on the new family of Blackwell GPUs, which offers 20 petaflop of AI performance on a single GPU and will allow organizations to train AI models four times faster. 

Analysts say Nvidia’s latest announcements are significant, as the company aims to further bolster its leadership position in the lucrative, and highly competitive AI chip market. 

“These announcements shore up Nvidia’s leadership position, and it shows the company continues to innovate,” said Jim McGregor, founder and principal analyst at Tirias Research. 

At GTC, Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang said his company is well placed to grab an outsized chunk of worldwide spending on data center equipment because of the variety of chips and software it’s producing. 

The executive said that $250 billion will be spent on data center gear annually and his company is positioned to take a bigger share than other chipmakers.  

Check out our coverage of the event for more technical details and analysis. 

Chips Are Up 

The hardware announcements didn’t end with Nvidia’s GTC this week. The US Department of Commerce confirmed it would award Intel $8.5 billion in grants and as much as $11 billion in loans to help fund an expansion of its semiconductor factories, marking the largest award from a program designed to reinvigorate the domestic chip industry.

The package will support more than $100 billion in US investments from Intel, including efforts to produce cutting-edge semiconductors at large-scale plants in Arizona and Ohio, the department said. 

The money also will help pay for equipment research and development and advanced packaging projects at smaller facilities in Oregon and New Mexico.  

The news was welcomed by the Semiconductor Industry Association (SIA), which said the move would “create jobs, boost US and local economies, and make America stronger, safer, and more technologically advanced.” 

Billion-Dollar Data Center Investment 

In data center development news, Google has announced it is expanding its presence in the Midwest with a $1 billion investment that will include the company’s first data center in Kansas City, Missouri. 

In addition to the data facility, the investment includes a new power purchase agreement (PPA) with Ranger Power that will support 400 MW of new-to-the-grid carbon-free energy capacity. 

“Google’s selection of the Kansas City region is another example of our state’s ability to attract and support world-class companies,” said Governor Mike Parson. 

Elsewhere, Blackstone has provided Aligned Data Centers with a $600 million credit facility to support the development of the operator’s newest and largest data center in West Jordan, Utah. 

In the UK, AtlasEdge has unveiled a new data center in the northern city of Leeds. “The new site provides connectivity, colocation, and cloud services in one of the UK’s fasting growing cities economically and an increasingly influential digital hub,” the company stated. 

In Manchester, plans appear to be moving forward for Kao Data’s 40 MW data center. According to reports, a local planning committee is expected to green-light the company’s plans for a $440 million data center in the town of Stockport. Download Kao Data’s white paper for more details. 

Regulatory Updates 

In regulatory news, the European Commission has adopted an EU-wide scheme for rating sustainability of data centers. 

As foreseen under the new, recast Energy Efficiency Directive, this secondary legislation requires data center operators to report the key performance indicators to the European database by September 15, 2024 and then by May 15 in 2025 and subsequent years. 

It follows extensive consultation with EU countries and stakeholders and a period for public feedback at the end of last year and a two-month scrutiny period for the Council and European Parliament. 

The full details of the reporting scheme can be found here. 

In Singapore, meanwhile, the island-state is mulling the introduction of the Digital Infrastructure Act (DIA).

As detailed in Lexology, the DIA builds on the Cybersecurity Act and aims to enhance the resilience and security of the digital infrastructure in Singapore. The scope of the DIA goes beyond cybersecurity and touches on other risks that may affect resilience. 

The DIA is currently being drafted. 

International Data Center Day 

And finally, it was International Data Center Day on Tuesday (March 20), and we decided to mark the occasion with a fiendishly difficult quiz. 

If you have any familiarity with the data center industry, you're probably tuned into data center trends like power consumption innovations, security challenges, and sustainability strategies. 

But how much, exactly, do you know about these and other major aspects of modern data centers? 

Nearly 400 people have taken our quiz since Tuesday, and so far, only six people have got all 11 questions correct! 

Can you beat their score? Find out now and put your data center knowledge to the test! 

Other Great Reads on DCK This Week 

Data Center Storage Systems Revenue Shows Signs of Recovery for 2024. Data center storage revenues rose by more than 10% in the fourth quarter of 2023, according to a new report from Omdia. 

Balancing Act: The Dual Influence of AI on Data Center Power and Sustainability. At this year’s Data Center World, Lancium President Ali Fenn will explore how power dynamics might shape AI’s trajectory. 

Broadband Gear Spending Slipped 9% in 2023. Cable infrastructure spending was resilient but still down 3% in 2023, according to insight from Dell'Oro Group. 

Hindenburg Bets Against Data Center Owner Equinix in New Report. “We are aware of the report and in the process of reviewing claims made,” an Equinix spokesperson told Bloomberg. 

Samsung Creates Lab to Research Chips for AI’s Next Phase. The lab will initially focus on developing chips for LLMs with a focus on inference.