The Data Center Frontier Show Endeavor Business Media

The latest episode of the Data Center Frontier Show Podcast presents an Editors' Summit of sorts, as DCF's founder and Editor at Large Rich Miller drops by to join in the discussion with Editor in Chief Matt Vincent and Senior Editor David Chernicoff.
The editors discuss the challenges of power availability in leading data center markets and the concept of Gigawatt data Center campuses (as reflected by Rich's latest article) as a solution, focusing on renewable energy and innovative designs.
Microsoft's commitment to ten gigawatts of renewable energy, as well as the Infrastructure Masons recommendation of clean energy parks amounting to about the same, is mentioned, along with the challenges posed by climate change and the need for innovation in renewable energy. 
The pricing out of small data centers due to demand from hyperscalers is also discussed, as were the present, burgeoning prospects for nuclear energy to power the data center industry, including the absolutely accelerating nuclear SMR frontier, of which much was heard at Data Center World (Apr. 15-18) in Washington, DC.

For this episode of the Data Center Frontier Show podcast, DCF's editors sat down with Udi Paret, Chief Business Officer of ZutaCore, and Alison Deane, ZutaCore's VP of Marketing, to discuss the company's impactful showing at the NVIDIA GTC [GPU Technology Conference] event this past March.
Held at the San Jose Convention Center in the heart of Silicon Valley, both ZutaCore executives were intensively on hand for the event.
A Busy GTC for Zutacore 
At GTC, ZutaCore showcased its direct-to-chip, waterless liquid cooling technology, and announced support for the NVIDIA H100 and H200 Tensor Core GPUs to help maximize data centers' AI performance while delivering sustainability benefits. 
"I wore them out," said Deane of her press scheduling at NVIDIA GTC for Paret and his counterpart at GTC, ZutaCore CEO, Erez Freibach.
Paret and Deane said that Zutacore drew significant interest at GTC for the breadth of the company's announcements surrounding its HyperCool platform, comprised of direct-to-chip, waterless two-phase liquid cooling technology.
ZutaCore's HyperCool dielectric cold plate liquid cooling system involves a direct-contact, self-regulated, pool-boiling based evaporator, enabling networking and simultaneously cooling all chips on-demand. 
Several leading server manufacturers are engaged with ZutaCore to complete the certification and testing on the NVIDIA  GPU platforms. Compact, easy to install, and capable of cooling up 1500-watt processors and above, the company notes the platform is also qualified by processor manufacturers Intel and AMD, and deployed in major server manufacturers including Dell, SuperMicro, ASUS, Pegatron.
Centrally during the GTC 2024 event, ZutaCore showcased its H100 and H200 waterless dielectric cold plates supporting densities up to 1500W in the booths of Boston Limited, Hyve Solutions, and Pegatron.
Comparative Cooling Challenges
During the podcast, Paret emphasized the advantages of ZutaCore's Hypercool technology, while addressing comparative challenges faced by single-phase water-based solutions. "The AI explosion is causing a market shift and positioning ZutaCore strategically," he said.
With the NVIDIA H100’s ability to speed up large language models by 30x over the previous technology generation, and the H200 being touted as the world’s most efficient GPU for supercharging AI and HPC workloads, it's safe to these are two of the highest performing chips ever designed (even leaving aside NVIDIA's much-balleyhooed Blackwell platform.) 
However, with each GPU consuming 700W of power, this will challenge data centers that are already struggling to control factors of heat, energy consumption and footprint. 
ZutaCore’s HyperCool direct-to-chip waterless two-phase liquid cooling technology was designed specifically to answer such demands, and has already been proven to cool processors of 1500W or more, and currently for 100 kW per rack of computing power. 
“Next-generation GPUs have unique cooling requirements that are most effectively solved by waterless, direct-to-chip liquid cooling technology for current GPU of 1500W while increasing rack-processing density by 300%,” said ZutaCore CEO Freibach, who is a co-founder of the company. 
“Not only do hyperscalers eliminate the risk and massive expense of water leakage in the server, but they can also scale their cooling needs with little to no modifications to current real estate, power, or cooling systems. This is a game changer for the future of AI and HPC.”
Meanwhile, the ZutaCore executives noted how the increasing need for sustainable AI solutions highlights the importance of sustainable practices in data centers. 
In the arena of such concerns, ZutaCore's partnership and white-label sales agreement with Mitsubishi Heavy Industries (MHI) dramatically addresses the pressing challenges faced by data centers today, including the enhancement of heat exhaust efficiency, promotion of energy conservation, and decarbonization.

For this episode of the Data Center Frontier Show Podcast, DCF Editor in Chief Matt Vincent sits down for an instructive chat with Phillip Koblence, a strategic executive and ubiquitous thought leader in the data center and network space. 
Koblence co-founded NYI in 1996 and has successfully navigated through an ever-shifting infrastructure landscape, growing the company from a single data center in Lower Manhattan to a robust network with executional capabilities in key national and international markets. 
His leadership, focus on customer experience, and ability to cut through complexity and hype, has positioned NYI as an industry leader in high-touch infrastructure solutions. Koblence is also CEO of Critical Ventures, a consulting agency offering a range of services to help clients, owners and investors optimize the value of critical infrastructure assets.
Koblence sits on the DE-CIX North America Advisory Board as well as on the Board of OIX (formerly Open-IX). He is co-founder of the Nomad Futurist Foundation and podcast, designed to demystify the world of critical infrastructure and inspire younger generations to join the industry. 
The interview begins with a discussion of NYI's entry into 60 Hudson Street and the challenges of retrofitting legacy buildings for modern data center needs, while emphasizing the importance of connectivity and collaboration in the digital infrastructure industry, and highlighted the rapid pace of technological advancements such as AI.
Here's a timeline of the podcast's highlights:
2:03 - Koblence discusses NYI's entry into Manhattan's historic colocation and interconnection hub, 60 Hudson Street, emphasizing the importance of connectivity in New York City's digital infrastructure evolution.
6:20 - Koblence elaborates on the challenges and considerations when retrofitting legacy buildings like 60 Hudson for modern data center needs, highlighting the importance of creative solutions and understanding the nuances of different deployments.
11:38 - The discussion turns to an exploration of deploying data centers in skyscrapers, the evolving criticality of digital infrastructure, and the need for redundancy and a "data center mindset" in reckoning with society's reliance on connectivity.
20:02 - Remarks on the rapid pace of technological advancements, specifically the increasing densities of GPUs such as Nvidia's H100, H200, Grace Hopper, and Blackwell chips.
20:32 - More on the exponential increase in densities within the digital infrastructure community and predictions of a future "flattening out" of density growth.
23:59 - Koblence emphasizes the continued relevance of legacy facilities such as 2 megawatt (MW) or 5 MW data centers in modern deployments, particularly in major connectivity hubs. The concept of the edge is also discussed in the context of facilitating connectivity with AI sites.
26:59 - Koblence elaborates on the importance of collaboration and creating cohesive solutions across various data center facilities, while emphasizing the role of NYI as a solutions facilitator and discussing partnerships with Hudson IX and other providers.



31:22 -  Koblence elaborates on the mission of the Nomad Futurist foundation to demystify the world of digital infrastructure, highlighting the simplicity of the industry beneath the technical complexities, and emphasizing transparency and accessibility in making connectivity and digital infrastructure understandable and available.




 


Recent DCF Show Podcast Episodes: 
DCF Show: Data Center PR Practice Fosters Coalitions, Community Outreach to Reduce Development Backlash  
DCF Show: Data Center Construction and Dallas Market Talk with Burns & McDonnell 
DCF Show: The Top 5 Data Center Industry Stories of Q4 
DCF Show: Steve Madden, Equinix VP of Digital Transformation and Segmentation Marketing 
DCF Show: 8 Key Data Center Industry Themes for 2024, Part 3     

As recorded on March 22, 2024, this episode of the Data Center Frontier Show Podcast featured the following participants: 
• Matt Vincent, Editor in Chief and Podcast Host, Data Center Frontier • Ali Heydari, Technical Director and Distinguished Engineer, NVIDIA • Marcus Hopwood, Product Management Director, Equinix • Bernie Malouin, CEO and Founder, JetCool  The podcast discussion begins with a focus on NVIDIA's latest insights, as imparted by Heydari, in the context of products, partnerships, and trend-leadership, as revealed at the recent NVIDIA GTC 2024 AI Conference (Mar. 18-21). 
The conversation opens up to look at broader implications and developments within the tech and data center industries, such as Equinix's plans to enable liquid cooling at more than 100 data centers globally, and facets of their latest partnership with NVIDIA, as characterized by Hopwood. 
The discussion turns to JetCool's history of providing innovative liquid cooling solutions for high-density chipsets, underlining the critical role of cooling technologies in support of the rapid growth of AI applications in data centers. 
The talk also explores ways of advancing efficiency and sustainability in high-powered clusters through warm coolants and heat reuse, considering energy efficiency directives in the EU and UK.
View a timeline of the podcast's highlights and read the full article about the podcast.

For this episode of the DCF Show podcast, we interview Jason Carolan, Chief Innovation Officer at data center operator Flexential. He’s a 25-year expert in the enterprise IT industry, with experience leading companies through technological evolutions like the one we’re experiencing right now. 
Carolan believes there is a bigger story to uncover from the sheer dollar amount of Nvidia’s recent blockbuster valuation. In response to Nvidia’s market dominance in AI and data centers, Carolan wanted to discuss larger trends that may follow from this specific news moment. 
According to Carolan:  “Nvidia's earnings results and forecasts for a continued AI boom doesn't come as too much of a surprise with the volume of businesses that are increasingly testing and utilizing the technology.
Nvidia's data center business is a combination of GPU and their network technologies, which further showcases the importance of high performance architectures that can support next generation AI demands. The company is currently forecasted to ship 4-5 times more GPUs this coming year – indicating another trend line with little competition in sight. 
As inference matures, we will see more diversity in chip suppliers but that is a ways off. The bottom line is that, now with accelerating AI rollouts, companies will need more compute capacity, ultra-high bandwidth and very low latency in order to succeed.”

This January, Milldam Public Relations announced the launch of its Data Center Community Relations Service, which the company's President and Founder Adam Waitkunas claims is the first community relations service exclusively serving the data center space and the digital infrastructure sector. 
In addition to tailormade communication strategies, Adam contends that data center community relations will require coalition building and garnering influence with local officials and stakeholders. He says the new service has been launched in response to the recent widespread backlash to data center development and the lack of tools to combat this within the data center industry. 
Personally overseeing the new service offering, Adam is a public relations professional with nearly twenty years of data center industry experience and a background in politics and public affairs, including extensive experience in media relations, marketing strategy, business development and strategic partnerships. 
Prior to founding Milldam Public Relations in 2005, Adam was the manager of Doug Stevenson's 14th Middlesex District State Representative campaign, which set a record for fundraising for a challenger in a Massachusetts State Representative race.
Concord, Massachusetts-based Milldam Public Relations is a full-service public relations firm that provides competitively priced strategic communications, media-relations and event management to a diverse array of clients throughout the country. 
The firm has solidified its position as the go-to public relations firm for companies in the critical infrastructure space. Clients from Boston to Los Angeles include: The Association of Information Technology Professionals-Los Angeles, OpTerra Energy Services, The Critical Facilities Summit, Hurricane Electric, Instor Solutions, Inc., and RF Code.
Under Adam's direction, Milldam has helped technology clients across the country secure articles in publications such as: The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, CFO Magazine, Data Center Knowledge, Green Tech Media, The Boston Business Journal, Mission Critical Magazine, The Silicon Valley Business Journal and Capacity Magazine, among others. 
Additionally, in his career Adam has helped businesses become thought leaders in their fields and a valued resource for industry-specific media, helping them to increase sales, promote awareness and become attractive targets for M&A. 
 
Data Center Community Relations Service
The new service is premised on the reality that, for many years, the data center industry has frequently operated under the radar, but has become more visible within the last few years. Certain communities throughout North America have taken notice and have started pushing back municipally against proposed developments, most notably in Virginia and Arizona. 
For example, in recent months, a number of Virginia environmental groups formed a coalition calling s for more oversight of the data center industry. And in January, King George County, Virginia officials voted to renegotiate a prior agreement for a large cloud provider's $6B Virginia data center campus.  The reversal is partly due to growing local political opposition to data center development.
With the launch of Milldam's Data Center Community Relations Service, Waitkunas contends that the digital infrastructure sector now has access to an offering that will equip them with the tools necessary to articulate the benefits of data centers to the local community while proactively addressing local concerns such as traffic infrastructure management and noise, helping to ensure a smoother path to success for the development. 
Critical infrastructure plays a predominant role in most people's daily lives throughout North America, driving the need for data center operators. Waitkunas points out that strong community engagement is essential for data centers to properly communicate their value and successfully navigate the complexity of communi