Data Center News Roundup: AMD Throws Down the Gauntlet, Digital Realty Unveils Global Venture

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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AMD Takes on Nvidia 

The end of the year is fast approaching, but the global semiconductor market is showing no sign of slowing. This week, AMD rolled out the Instinct MI300X, a new powerful data center GPU that the company hopes will grab market share from Nvidia in the lucrative AI chip market. 

Designed for cloud providers and enterprises, the MI300X GPU is built for generative AI applications and outperforms Nvidia’s H100 GPU in two key metrics: memory capacity and memory bandwidth, which enables AMD to deliver comparable AI training performance and significantly higher AI inferencing performance, AMD executives said.    

“It’s the highest performance accelerator in the world for generative AI,” said AMD CEO Lisa Su at the company’s “Advancing AI” event in San Jose, California. 

Related:The World's Most Unusual and Unique Data Centers

The launch came as Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang gave a candid update on the competitive landscape for the global semiconductor market. 

Huawei, Intel, and an expanding group of semiconductor startups pose a stiff challenge to Nvidia’s dominant position in the market for artificial intelligence accelerators, Huang told reporters in Singapore on Wednesday.  

“We have a lot of competitors, in China and outside China,” Huang said. “Most of our competitors don’t really care where I am. They want to compete with us everywhere we go.” 

Hyperscale Joint Venture 

Blackstone is expanding its bet on data centers through a new venture with Digital Realty Trust. The two companies will seek to develop four data center campuses in Frankfurt, Paris, and Virginia, with an estimated cost of about $7 billion. 

Under the terms of the deal, Blackstone will have an 80% stake and contribute $700 million in capital initially, while Digital Realty will own 20% and manage development and day-to-day operations. 

Blackstone cited the “AI arms race” that’s fueling demand for data centers. The properties generally house servers and routers to support technology such as cloud services and often require vast amounts of power to run. 

“Data centers are experiencing once-in-a-generation demand growth, driven by cloud adoption and the AI revolution,” Blackstone President Jon Gray said in the statement. 

Related:New Data Center Developments: December 2023

Fresh Developments 

In data center development news, Green Mountain has completed the first of three new data center buildings for TikTok, which will support the short-form video giant’s increasing data storage needs in Europe. 

The 30 MW data center is expected to go live in the second quarter of next year, forming part of TikTok’s ‘Project Clover’ initiative. Once completed, the campus will become Europe’s largest data center run on renewable energy. 

Elsewhere in Scandinavia, colocation provider atNorth has announced its further expansion into Finland with a new site planned on a 21-hectare plot in the city of Kouvola. 

The FIN04 site will have an immediate power supply of 60 MW with the first phase, ready for operation in the second half of 2025. 

Working closely with the city of Kouvola and energy partner, KSS Energia, the site will recover excess heat from the data center to be recycled for possible reuse within the local community. 

In the US, Microsoft is hoping to bring a sixth data center to Des Moines, Iowa, continuing its 15-year legacy in the city. 

According to the Des Moines Register, the latest Microsoft data center would be called Ruthenium and occupy around 132 acres of land. 

Elsewhere, Amazon is moving forward with plans to develop a data center in Round Rock, Texas, while Meta has selected DPR Construction to build its $1 billion data center in Mesa, Arizona. 

For more of the latest data center developments, check out our December roundup. 

Data Centers Inside Wind Turbines? 

New, sustainability-focused data center innovations continue to come thick and fast. This week, CNN pulled focus on a new concept that aims to help the industry reduce its carbon footprint by housing data centers inside wind turbines. 

WindCORES says its elevated data centers are almost carbon-neutral, as the IT equipment is powered by the wind turbine, while fiber optic cables provide a constant internet connection. 

“The German data center average is 430 grams of CO2 released per kilowatt hour,” windCORES managing director Fiete Dubberke told CNN. “For windCORES, it is calculated at just 10 grams per kilowatt hour.” 

The news is the latest in a series of sustainability-focused data center announcements. Check out our recent coverage to catch up on small modular reactors, underwater facilities, and even flying data centers. 

Other Great Reads on DCK This Week 

Kenya Secures Funding for Major Data Center Infrastructure Project. EcoCloud will invest $1.5 billion to expand Kenya's data center capacity by 200 MW. 

Container Security in the Cloud: Understanding Concepts and Requirements. We delve into the world of cloud container security, detailing essential deployment insights and protection strategies. 

New Data Center Developments: December 2023. We look at some of the latest data center developments that have been announced over the past month. 

What Is Gemini? Google Launches New AI Software. Google unveiled Gemini, a new AI tool that it claims is better at math, coding, and reasoning tasks than existing AI programs. 

Microsoft Is Getting a New 'Outsider' CISO. Igor Tsyganskiy inherits the high-profile CISO spot in Redmond, while his predecessor, Bret Arsenault, is named chief security adviser. 

Amazon CTO Talks Cloud, Creative Architecture, and Cost. Drawing on ghosts of hardware past, Werner Vogels delivered a keynote at re:Invent about moving fast in the cloud with consideration for cost.