Ask most people what a data center looks like and they’ll probably describe something out of a sci fi movie they saw –– a massive infrastructure located underground with huge rooms of supercomputers and interconnected racks of servers, lights ominously blinking as they silently process data and power futuristic experiments.
These data centers may be impressive on the big screen, but in reality data centers like these have become dinosaurs in today’s world –– running 24/7 x 365 with energy-guzzling power systems, redundant network connections, inefficient cooling systems, and non-compliant security.
What Happened?
Between 2005 and 2015, as more and more companies merged and content distribution networks emerged, fewer businesses could afford to have their own data centers. So, data moved to the cloud and most enterprises left the data center workload to giants like Amazon, Google, Microsoft, ATT, and Verizon.
At the same time, software also evolved. So, there were fewer hardware redundancies required, and web applications and database systems became redundant. All companies needed to deliver their products and services to customers was software.
The Birth of Blockchain
Out of the wreckage that came with the global financial crisis of 2008, significant tech innovation began blossoming. Blockchain tech burst on the scene and further distributed data and software, bringing decentralizations to the forefront. At first, mining software was run on traditional computers, then on specialized equipment called ASIC, which was piled into warehouses with no redundancies or backups. And it wasn’t long before cheaper power sources were being explored to fuel the supercomputing.
Crypto Mining and AI Industries Are on the Rise
Today, crypto mining facilities have become the gold standard for state-of-the-art standard for state-of-the-art engineered facilities –– using efficiency and economic constraints as their barometer. There are mining facilities operating hundreds of ASIC miners, and some of them have gone so far as to put the ASIC miners in immersion cooled liquid oil baths to achieve even greater efficiency and costsavings.
Artificial Intelligence (AI) is another fast-growing industry that requires supercomputing to solve a new class of computational problems by running tasks in the background. Crunching large amounts of data –– billions of terabytes –– is a very intensive process that’s extremely expensive to run on a cloud. Every model train requires hundreds of hours of computing and server time, so using a cloud for these computations is prohibitively expensive if you have your own infrastructure.
Pioneering the Convergence of Crypto Mining, AI and Data Centers
Since both the AI and crypto mining industries require a global network of supercomputing data centers, our team at Galaxy Capital Partners (GCP) saw an opportunity to create next-generation data center infrastructure ideally suited to meet their unique needs. We developed a set of high-density, immersion cooled facilities that are value engineered for low levels of redundancy. As more and more non-redundant facilities are installed globally, we can build redundancy in access to compute resources through decentralization.
The data center of the future we envision at GCP is one with decentralized, value engineered facilities that are low-cost and always available. When one facility goes down, there is another one available to immediately take its place. So, all the massive, complex and expensive equipment of the past is no longer necessary. There’s just one, single compute fabric that’s always available with one generic infrastructure layer –– just like the blockchain.
It won’t be long before we start seeing these new hyperscale data centers springing up around the globe –– and in the next generation of sci fi movies.
About GCP
Galaxy Capital Partners (GCP), is a real estate development company specializing in energy infrastructure and data center development. It is a leading data center owner, operator and developer with a focus on strategically-located wholesale enterprise data centers in North America and Asia.
Galaxy Capital Partners is an investment and development firm that aims to develop the next-generation of data center infrastructure. Contact us at [email protected].