Syed Imran Haider 
There has been a rise in demand for more powerful processors, all due to the artificial intelligence (AI) boom. It has also pushed up demand for energy required for keeping the data centers cool.
This has turned into an opportunity for Sustainable Metal Cloud, a data center company that has ‘sustainable AI factories’ in Australia and Singapore. These comprise of its HyperCubes.
HyperCubes
Nvidia processors have been integrated into the servers in HyperCubes. Polyalphaolefin is a synthetic oil used to submerge these processors, as it is able to draw heat away with better efficiency than air.
According to the company, its platform is able to cut down energy consumption by 50%, as compared to the traditional air cooling technology, which is usually implemented in data centers.
The co-CEO and co-founder of Sustainable Metal Cloud, Tim Rosenfield, said that their platform can be handy for high density hosting for GPUs.
He added that the kind of hosting it offers is required for platforms, such as Grace Blackwell. These are the new generation of AI graphic processors that had been launched in March by Nvidia.
According to the Singapore-based company, it is also 28% cheaper to install its immersion cooling technology as compared to liquid-based solutions.
It is possible to integrate HyperCubes in any data center and they can also be used in existing data centers in any unused spaces.
The Expansion
Rosenfield said that since their solution is in containers, it is possible for them to go anywhere quickly. He added that they could set up new availability zones in accordance with demand from customers.
He added that they were already expanding into other markets, including India and Thailand. Deloitte and Nvidia are already some of the most prominent enterprise partners of SMC.
Not only is it Nvidia’s preferred cloud partner for AI and compute, but also offers GPU clusters that the chip giant has designed.
SMC had made the announcement of its partnership with Deloitte back in July. It involves providing access to the GPU computing infrastructure of Nvidia to clients of the consultancy for developing AI applications.
The Demand
AI has had a transformative impact that has seen businesses and governments rush into it. Consequently, there has been a rise in demand for data centers.
In order to mitigate the hefty consumption of energy, countries like Singapore where SMC is based, are focusing more on ‘green’ data centers for supporting their AI ambitions.
Therefore, it is not surprising that Singapore has already committed over 500 million Singaporean dollars, or $379.7 million to it.
Sustainable Metal Cloud has also received funding from ST Telemedia Global Data Centers, a Singaporean state investor.
The Temasek-supported data center operator is considered one of the largest ones in Asia.
Currently, SMC is working on raising equity and debt of $400 million and $550 million, respectively. The funds would be used for expanding beyond Singapore.
An increasing number of technology firms are now taking an interest in liquid cooling for their data centers. This is because overheating risks rise due to increasing performance.
