OVER DEZE AFLEVERING
This podcast is a live recording from a Tech Thursday that took place in Calgary called 'The Tech Behind Data Centres'. Our speakers were:
- Thomas Farran, VP at Longbow Capital. Longbow is an investor in VoltaGrid, a company that just signed a 2.3GW deal with Oracle.
- Benjamin Sutton, Product Marketing Manager at CoolIT. CoolIT was acquired last week for $4.75B, the city’s largest tech deal ever.
- Joe Gentile, Account Executive at eStruxtures Data Centre. eStruxtures is Canada’s largest data center provider.
Moderated by: Vlad Oujegov, Founder of Western Canada Data Centre Alliance.
We discussed:
- Massive Scale: The scale of data centers is changing significantly; for example, a proposed 2.3-gigawatt facility would be the largest capital expenditure project in Canadian history.
- Bring Your Own Power (BYOP): Because local grids often cannot support gigawatt-level demands without 5–7 years of upgrades, developers are increasingly building on-site natural gas generation to meet immediate power needs.
- Grid Benefits: While some projects are "behind the meter," experts suggest grid-connected facilities can benefit the community by providing flexible loads that can be managed during peak demand or storms.
- The End of Air Cooling: Modern AI chips from Nvidia have reached a thermal limit where they can no longer be cooled by air alone.
- Liquid Cooling: New data centers are adopting 100% liquid cooling, which is far more efficient than air. This technology reduces Power Usage Effectiveness (PUE) from a historical 1.6 down toward 1.1.
- Free Cooling: In regions like Alberta, operators can utilize "free air" cooling for hundreds of days a year when the ambient temperature is below 10°C, significantly reducing water and power consumption.
- Sovereign Compute: There is a growing focus on "sovereign compute" to ensure Canadian data remains under Canadian jurisdiction and brand, free from the reach of the U.S. Patriot Act.
- Market Growth: Alberta is currently viewed as a "frontier market" with over 1.2 gigawatts of approved grid-connected projects, surpassing the status of global hubs like Northern Virginia in 2018.
Follow Ben Sutton on LinkedIn:https://www.linkedin.com/in/benjaminsutton95/Follow Thomas Farran on LinkedIn:https://www.linkedin.com/in/thomasfarran/Follow Joe Gentile on LinkedIn:https://www.linkedin.com/in/joe-gentile-20082429/Follow Vlad Oujegov on LinkedIn:https://www.linkedin.com/in/vladoujegov/Follow Western Canada Data Centre Alliance on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/wcdca/Follow Tech Thursday on LinkedIn:www.linkedin.com/company/tech-thursday/
Engels
Canada
IN DEZE AFLEVERING
TRANSCRIPTIE 🔗
Are you the producer of this podcast?
Add a podcast transcript
Need Audio-to-Text?
Transcribe with Listen411 in Just 60 Seconds
OUDE AFLEVERINGEN ZOEKEN
Zoek naar eerdere afleveringen van Tech Thursday Live!.
ANDERE AFLEVERINGEN IN DEZE PODCAST
"The whole thing is f*cked. It's really messed up because we haven't spent the time and the attention to build the critical infrastructure across the entire thing."
Jesse Wiebe said that on stage in Ottawa last week. He runs the Canadian Startup Capital Association, has invested in over 40 startup…
"Our goal is to build Canada's first trillion dollar company."
Graeme Harrison and Dan Chapman co-founded Augur VC, then incubated Simply Silicon out of their first fund. Their first data centre site, Foundation, is being built in downtown Calgary right now. Their plan is to build many mo…
"I told the team we had six months to live."
Nic Beique founded Helcim in 2008 as a 23-year-old self-taught coder. For ten years, he ran it as a reseller in the shadow of a bank. In 2020, he and his team made the call to pivot, build their own independent payments stack, and take on Stri…
Over $125 billion in assets. 4 million clients. From an investment app nobody would download to one of the most prolific product companies in Canadian tech.
A few hours before this panel, Wealthsimple announced a suite of new banking products. By the time we sat down, it was already public. So ins…
Energy and mining are two of the largest industries by Canadian GDP. They've been generating high-quality data for decades. The infrastructure is there. The problems are real.
So why is almost nobody talking about how much AI adoption is actually happening inside them, or how much further it could…
Disclaimer: De podcast en de illustraties die op deze pagina zijn ingesloten, zijn afkomstig van Thursday Media, eigendom van de eigenaar en niet gelieerd aan of goedgekeurd door Listen Notes, Inc.
BEWERKEN
Bedankt voor uw hulp bij het up-to-date te houden van de podcast-database .
