This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.
I actually think this is a much better solution than the current strategy of bulldozing -- literally and metaphorically -- everything and everyone to build giant, power hungry datacenters that are an enormous waste of money and resources.
Old telco facilities are prime locations for datacenters. They already exist, along with adequate on site power and communications infrastructure, and therefore dont require destroying thousands of acres of land or alienating all the local residents.
Telco switch buildings are already set up with the power AND the cooling. Old copper phone/DSL switch gear used to be power hungry as fuck.
The plus is not destroying more viable land. Whether or not the power and communications infrastructure can handle what even a small data center requires isn't a given. There will be a drain on resources, nothing is for free. And when they're backing in the jet engine power additions with full approval from the bought city officials...
Graphics cards are little AI data centers
....so maybe NVIDIA could just sell graphics cards to the public? Imagine that.
Apparently the solution to people not wanting a giant data center next door is to put 130 smaller ones next door to 130 different people. Reusing old buildings is sensible, but if the selling point is dodging local opposition, that tells you rather a lot about how the industry views the locals.
I would say it's not for AI but they are taking another shot at remote gaming and will challenge Sony. Those 130 facilities will allow them to have very small latency.
