The path to data center carbon neutrality, says the power systems maker, leads through the elimination of lead-acid batteries from backup systems. Maybe, but just how much of a course change is lithium-ion, really?

There’s a sensible-sounding argument that dynamic power demands on data centers’ compute racks, require dynamic cooling systems. But cooling has been, and perhaps always will be, a factor of space.

It’s an astonishing sum being invested in a massive buildout of the world’s key hyperscale facilities. And it’s being made, in large part, by the wealth fund of an entire country.

A handful of forward-thinking initiatives begins paying off for Microsoft, as its entirely air-cooled facility opens up in the middle of a potentially critical drought zone.

For six years already, most every data center migration to modern digital infrastructure has made it, well, most of the way. Now Red Hat works to move some organizations at least somewhat further.

It may become more than a SmartNIC. Whatever the IPU ends up becoming, it’s a clear step toward disaggregation, and a giant leap for the future formation of a componentized “Xeon Platform.”

The system-on-a-chip maker had been scoring points on scalability and performance, with its Neoverse N1-based Altra series. If Altra truly is a Xeon-slayer, why take it out of the fight?

The cloud provider’s benchmark data compares Ampere’s Arm chips with AMD Rome and Milan and Intel Skylake.