Search Results

1966 - Packet Switching is the concept of breaking data into smaller parts that are then sent independently across a network. Once they arrive at the destination, the packets are reassembled. 1969 - ARPANET is the first operational packet switching network,...

Conclusion: The drastic increase in square footage between the switch from Data Centers to Hyperscale AI Data Centers constitutes a worrying shift in scale. With later examples such as the Dalles Facility and the Abilene, TX facility operating more as camp...

We compared the amount of power that each facility outputs in a day against the amount a typical US household uses in a year. The power output started out miniscule, only providing enough power for one of today's smartphones, but gradually rose until the adv...

We plotted speed and access against each other as a means of showing the inverse relationship between the two concepts. As access to technology and internet traffic grows, the speed of software not only keeps up, but also continues decreasing. The speed of d...

Just one hyperscale data center uses about 200 million gallons of water per year; enough water to fill the entire area enclosed by Rice University's inner loop to a depth of 13.85 feet!

Recent years have witnessed a shift in the U.S. data center size, with the top panel showing how the percentage of servers housed in hyperscale and large colocation centers has grown steadily since 2014, while small/medium colocation facilities have remained...

Image: A Google data center in Finland that utilizes seawater cooling Coastal areas may appear to have an abundance of water, but this does not mean they are unaffected by the massive water demands of data centers. Some coastal data centers use seawater for...

Moore's Law is the observation, first made by Gordon Moore in 1965, that the number of transistors on an integrated circuit doubles approximately every two years, leading to more powerful, smaller, and less expensive electronics. This techno-economic model h...

https://www.ibm.com/think/topics/data-centers https://www.digitalrealty.com/resources/articles/a-brief-history-of-data-centers https://www.nps.gov/subjects/nationalhistoriclandmarks/site-of-the-first-telephone-exchange.htm chrome-extension://efaidnbmnnnibpc...

Within this larger timeline of innovations and events, there are 3 main stories of development. What materials connects us? Understanding cables and the physical networks these create within our landscape. What are the technologies that connected us globa...

This figure highlights the contrast between city rainfall and the scale of water consumption by data centers. Houston, with nearly 1.7 million acre-feet of annual rainfall, receives more than eight times Phoenix’s 200,000 acre-feet. This is a reflection of t...

Boxtown Neighborhood, Memphis, TN: From Founding to Elon Musk xAI Pre-Musk 1865 - Founding of Boxtown Established shortly after the Civil War as a settlement for freedmen and formerly enslaved people on the southern edge of Memphis. The neighborhood becam...

Boxtown and xAI's Colossus Data Center - Social Impact of Data Centers Historical Neglect Shapes Present Vulnerability Bowtown's long history of underinvestment, from delayed municipal services to broken infrastructure promises, created conditions where the ...

1940s to 1960s - scale 1 The world’s first electronic digital computer, ENIAC (electronic numerical integrator and computer), was built for the U.S. Army between 1943-1945 and ushered in the Information Age. When it was refurbished and redeployed in 1946, i...

Jensen Huang presenting Nivida GPUs OpenAI, Oracle deepen AI data center push with 4.5 gigawatt Stargate expansion Meta Data Center AI Data Center as a separate typology The rise of artificial intelligence has given the data center a new architectu...

Environmental Racism - Disproportional exposure of minority populations and low-income communities to environmental hazards and poor environmental conditions, often resulting from intentional or unintentional policies, practices, and systemic biases. Procedur...

Power Generation and Transmission Where does most of the power come from? Maintenance of Power System Who facilitates these systems of power and network, and who maintains them? Electricity, Fiber Optics, and Datacenter Network Transmission "Ownersh...

Emphasis on Mobility Microchips have downsized from hundreds of nanometers in the 1970s to the cutting-edge 2 nm today through decades of advances in manufacturing and design rather than a single “miracle.” This was driven by photolithography improvements—mos...

"Data Center Alley" Ashburn, VA: Data Center Growth & Power Impacts 2000 Ashburn’s transformation into the world’s largest concentration of data centers began in the early 2000s, when the MAE-East internet exchange point and dense fiber networks made Lou...