Good Thursday morning, and welcome to Data Center Digest.
This is the newsletter that examines data centers and the people, technologies, and trends that make them run.

Here’s what we’re looking at today:

📈 IBM is planning significant pricing increases for cloud services internationally
⚔️ Intel enters the AI chip wars with latest next-gen Xeon processors
Big Deals: Meta plans a new on in Minneapolis, Switch’s Atlanta campus has a horrible name, and Google gets in on the fun.
Resources: NTT’s cool behind the data center series

Est. read time: 4mins 32

- News -

IBM eyeing significant rise in international cloud pricing

At the Hot Chips 2023 show this week, IBM announced plans to raise cloud service costs by up to 26% starting in January 2024.

CIO.com says the price hike will affect  IBM’s Infrastructure and Platform services, and international customers will be the hardest hit.

Here’s a breakdown of some of the increases we expect to see from IBM: 

Kubernetes Services, RedHat OpenShift, security services, and cloud database offerings (Message Hub, Cloudant, SQL query services) will all see an estimated global price increase of 3%.

Price hikes apply to bare metal, virtual server instances, file and block storage, and networking infrastructure as well. However, these IaaS services increase will apply only to international data centers.

Regionally, price increases look like this:  

• Montreal and Toronto (3%),

• London (5.6%),

• Frankfurt, Milan, and Paris (5.5%),

• Sao Paulo (7.5%),

• Osaka, Singapore, and Tokyo (6.2%).

Certain data centers, including Chennai, Sydney, Dallas, Washington, and San Jose, will not experience any price increases.

What’s more:

IBM's Cloud Object Storage service will see a 25% increase in Accelerated Archive storage costs and a 26% increase in Deep Archive storage costs globally.
Finally, pricing for Power Systems Virtual Server, third-party software, and network bandwidth will remain unchanged.

This price hike by IBM follows a trend among a number of technology vendors who have raised prices to address inflation and rising labor costs.

Intel enters the AI chip war with new Xeon processors

Intel has unveiled this week its next-generation Xeon processors, Sierra Forest and Granite Rapids.

These processors mark the introduction of the Efficient-core (E-core) architecture alongside the existing Performance-core (P-core) architecture. They offer up to 144 cores, emphasizing improved memory and I/O bandwidth performance to compete with AMD's Epyc processors.

E-cores and P-cores

The P-core line focuses on high-performance compute for intensive tasks, while the E-core is designed for power efficiency in less intensive processes. These processors feature a chiplet design, enabling customization by mixing P-cores and E-cores.

Sierra Forest's E-cores promise 2.5x better rack density and 2.4x higher performance per watt than the current generation processor, Sapphire Rapids.

The new Granite Rapids P-cores provide 2-3x better performance in mixed AI workloads, partly due to an improvement of 2.8x memory bandwidth.

More details:

Granite Rapids supports up to eight sockets in a single server and includes Advanced Matrix Extensions (AMX) for deep learning processing.
Sierra Forest's E-cores, with up to 144 cores, aim to compete with Arm processors and target single- and dual-socket systems with low power consumption.

Both processors offer enhanced memory controllers supporting 12 DDR5-6400 memory channels and 136 PCIe 5.0 / CXL 2.0 interfacing, along with Intel's new MCR memory for increased bandwidth.

Intel plans to release these fifth-generation Xeon chips next year.

- Big Deals -

Ground finally breaks at Microsoft’s $1 billion Wisconsin data center

After announcing plans this spring, Microsoft has begun construction on a $1 billion data center in Mount Pleasant, Wisconsin.

This project comes after Foxconn's famous failed manufacturing hub plans for the same site, which only delivered a fraction of the promised jobs and investment.

The data center is expected to be operational by the end of 2026. Microsoft is also planning data centers in other locations in Wisconsin.

- Big Deals -

A terrible name, but still a big deal for Switch

Switch is planning a new data center campus called "Switch KEEP 2.0 Atlanta North Campus" in Bartow County, Georgia.
The 126-acre site is expected to house a single data center facility that one filing describes as “1,620 feet (493 meters) in length.”

 
Switch intends to invest $772 million in the campus, with the first phase scheduled for completion in Q2 2026 and ongoing expansion until 2046. The project is currently undergoing a 30-day public review process, and Switch has yet to officially announce it.

- Big Deals -

Meta building out 280 acres outside Minneapolis

Meta has confirmed its involvement in a $700 million data center project in Minneapolis, Minnesota.
Meta is looking to acquire 280 acres of UMore Park property near Dakota County Technical College for $40 million.

This property will be used for the data center project, and the University of Minnesota's Board of Regents is set to vote on the deal.

Resources

Last thing…

Check out this side-by-side of Google’s first-ever server rack from 1999, and their newest TPUv5e. Pretty remarkable…

Thanks a lot for reading!

Please let us know how we’re doing by replying directly to this email. And share this with someone who loves data centers.

- Taylor