Seagate aims to launch 50TB HAMR hard drives in 2027
Heat-assisted magnetic recording is now a tried and tested storage solution
Data center articles
Samsung is locking in five-year chip deals as AI demand shows no signs of slowing
Samsung's chip business is booming, but its phone division just posted its first loss
The US just banned Chinese humanoid robots and power inverters over security fears
The ban is expected to hit Unitree, Sungrow, and Huawei hardest
Teacher arrested for clapping in support of speaker opposing data center
The teacher said he had a right to applaud before officers removed him from the meeting
California's largest AI data center is suing for access to 287 million gallons of Colorado River water a year
Critics fear the lawsuit could shift water from farms to AI
AMD's Helios rack is finally shipping, and it's coming for Nvidia's AI dominance
AMD claims 20% better performance than Nvidia's Vera CPU with new Epyc chips
AMD confirms Zen 7 Epyc "Florence" for 2028 and previews Zen 8 Epyc "Ravenna" for 2030
AMD also unveiled the CDNA 5-based Instinct MI455X AI accelerator
The big picture: AMD had a busy week, announcing the Ryzen 7 7700X3D CPU for gaming PCs and the Epyc Venice lineup for agentic AI workloads in data centers and high-end workstations. The company also launched the Helios rack-scale AI system at its Advancing AI 2026 event in San Francisco and previewed its next-generation Zen 7 and Zen 8 CPU architectures.
Intel just posted its best growth in 15 years – and burned billions to make it happen
Intel posts 25% revenue growth to $16.1 billion, driven by 59% surge in Data Center and AI sales
Nvidia is challenging 20 years of datacenter CPU design with new Vera chip
Nvidia joins the battle of making the CPU interesting again
The big picture: Nvidia lifted the embargo on its Vera CPU deep dive this week, and the disclosure amounts to a direct challenge to two decades of x86 datacenter design philosophy. This is the most detail the company has shared on the chip since it first appeared on the Rubin roadmap, and it confirms something I have suspected for a while: Nvidia is not treating the CPU as an attach story anymore. It is treating it as a battleground with a lot of potential dollars at play.
Data centers on track to consume 20% of US power by 2035
The AI-fueled data center boom could put a serious strain on the power grid
Iran claims it destroyed Amazon's main data hub in Bahrain. Nobody has confirmed it
AWS's Bahrain region was already offline following earlier attacks
Refuse a data center transmission line on your property, and power companies may force it through anyway
AI's growing hunger for land and electricity is pushing eminent domain law into new, contested territory
Cheyenne suspends datacenter wastewater after rare bacterium traced to Meta's AI site
Another data center water scare gives AI opponents more ammunition
The US now has three microreactors running – and data centers are watching closely
DOE-backed microreactors from Deployable, Antares, and Valar Atomics have now all reached criticality
Meta is using old DDR4 memory in DDR5-only AI servers to save on hardware costs
Cutting corners: Faced with rising memory costs, Meta says it is reusing old DDR4 RAM in its servers rather than buying new hardware. The company revealed this week that it is repurposing DDR4 memory from decommissioned servers into its new DDR5-only machines, using a custom CXL ASIC that avoids the compatibility issues and major latency penalties that typically come with mixing memory generations. The design reportedly cuts AI inference server count by up to 25% and reduces job-restart and fragmentation overhead by 33%.
SpaceX offers half-price Starlink to Memphis residents while facing a lawsuit over data center's pollution
Cheaper internet, same emissions concerns
Cargo thieves are now stealing millions in data center hardware, not just GPUs and consoles
Illinois cops just recovered $2.3 million worth of AI data center equipment
Ripple effect: The AI boom may be hurting consumers, white-collar workers, and rural residents living near data centers, but it's opened up "new opportunities" for cargo thieves. Criminals are reportedly cashing in on the data center construction boom by stealing millions of dollars' worth of server hardware, cables, and other high-value tech equipment.
Fox apologizes after Mr. Wonderful accuses data center opponents of China ties
A not-so-wonderful apology
A hollow-core fiber cable just carried 51.3 Tb/s across 200 km
China's YOFC sets a new long-haul fiber record – no signal boosters required
Big Tech's $8 trillion AI bet is making consoles, cars, and electricity more expensive for everyone else
The cost of artificial intelligence is now showing up in the inflation data
Qualcomm unveils sweeping AI infrastructure strategy to take on Nvidia in the data center
Qualcomm's bold AI gamble goes far beyond phones
Google is spending billions to turn its TPU chips into a real challenger to Nvidia
Google backs $3.2 billion data center deal to get its chips into Anthropic's hands, mirroring Nvidia's playbook
Tim Cook confirms Apple price hikes are coming, iPhones could jump $200 or more
Even Cupertino can't escape RAMageddon
Researchers are turning old Pixel phones into a data center – and they outperform some server hardware
Old smartphones are piling up as e-waste, but wait... 25 phones can match a single server CPU
Forward-looking: Researchers at the University of California San Diego are testing whether retired smartphones can still do useful work instead of ending up as electronic waste. Working with Google, the team is trying to turn retired Pixel smartphones into a low-cost data center. The goal is to keep working hardware in use instead of throwing it out after a few upgrade cycles.
A $200 ChatGPT subscription could cost OpenAI $14,000 if you actually used it to its full potential
OpenAI starts losing money on ChatGPT Plus once usage tops 11%, Anthropic's Claude is no different