Items tagged with data centers
It takes some serious hardware to do the things that Facebook is able to do. In an effort to stay ahead of the technological curve, the social networking site announced today at the 2017 Open Compute Project (OCP) summit in Santa Clara a next-generation GPU server called Big Basin. It's the successor to the Big Sur GPU server announced in 2015 and it will help Facebook to continue leveraging artificial intelligence to power service like speech and text translations, photo classifiers, and real-time video classification. Big Basin was built in collaboration with Quanta Clout Technology (QCT), Facebook's ODM partner. As currently constructed, Big Basin features no less than eight NVIDIA Tesla P100...
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While an auto repair shop might get away with employing a 25-year-old Commodore 64 to balance drive shafts, to run Facebook, the largest social network on the planet, it takes more modern equipment, and a lot of of it. Unfortunately, most people don't ever get to see it. Rarely do companies like Facebook ever lift the curtain and give us a glimpse of the technological wizardry running the show, but Mark Zuckerberg has decided to do exactly that, showcasing one of Facebook's chilly data centers located some 70 miles south of the Arctic Circle. The data center resides in a small town called Luleå. It's not a location for warm weather people -- temperatures in the area fall below 50F degrees on...
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Submerging your PC in water probably isn't something you're keen on trying, and with good reason—water and electronics aren't the best of friends. So why then is Microsoft experimenting with under sea data centers? For one, we're coastal creatures with nearly half of society settling down near large bodies of water. However, it's not the only reason. "The vision of operating containerized data centers offshore near major population centers anticipates a highly interactive future requiring data resources located close to users. Deepwater deployment offers ready access to cooling, renewable power sources, and a controlled environment," Microsoft says. This is where Project Natick comes in. Project...
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Samsung says it's now mass producing what it claims is the most advanced DDR4 memory in the world. Built on 20nm-class process technology, Samsung's 16GB and 32GB DDR4 memory modules will find homes in enterprise servers and next-generation, large-scale data centers, the South Korean memory maker said. "The adoption of ultra-high-speed DDR4 in next-generation server systems this year will initiate a push toward advanced premium memory across the enterprise," said Young-Hyun Jun, executive vice president, memory sales and marketing, Samsung Electronics. "After providing cutting-edge performance with our timely supply of 16GB DDR3 earlier this year, we are continuing to extend the premium server...
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AMD has six data centers around the world, but the company is trying to consolidate to just three. It’s not hard to imagine why this would be a good strategy--maximizing resources such as CPUs and server space and achieving optimal power efficiency with regard to electricity and cooling saves piles of money. Having half as many facilities to deal with could certainly make that an easier task. However, one of the areas that AMD is apparently weighing heavily in its consolidation strategy is software licensing fees and associated taxes. The company’s 3,000 engineers use electronic design automation (EDA) software tools whose licensing fees are expensive, and apparently those costs differ...
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Data centers are notorious energy pigs. Can cloud computing be the cure? Yes, according to a growing body of research. A new study released by Pike Research shows that if businesses were to adopt cloud computing instead of building out their own data centers, by 2020 they could cut data center energy consumption worldwide by one-third over 2010's levels. Given that emissions from data centers worldwide is approaching the carbon dioxide emissions of the country of Argentina, that reduction is significant. The report says: “Pike Research forecasts that data centers will consume 139.8 terawatt hours (TWh) of electricity in 2020, a reduction of 1% from 201.8 TWh in 2010. This also represents...
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The inconvenient truth about data centers is that they consume lots of power. In addition to running a building-full of systems and storage devices 24/7, power is also consumed for networking equipment, cooling, battery backups, and even to support more modest human needs, such as lights and coffee makers. Both economically and socially, the United States is growing more conscientious of the need for power conservation. That's where programs like Energy Star take an active role. You've probably seen Energy Star stickers on air conditioners and refrigerators. "Energy Star is a joint program of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and the U.S. Department of Energy helping us all save...
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