Astera Labs showcases 320-lane PCIe 6.0 switch for vendor-agnostic scaling in data centers — up to 80 accelerators can be scaled up using PCIe alone

Astera Labs has shown off the Scorpio X-Series 320-lane PCIe switch that promises to enable vendor-agnostic scale-up capability for AI infrastructure and disaggregated data center infrastructure.
…

,
Supermicro shows off Vera Rubin NVL72 rack with all-new type of coolant — company claims coolant offers 1,000 times higher electrical impedance over standard cooling

Supermicro demonstrates upcoming servers based on AMD’s EPYC ‘Venice’ CPUs, MI450 accelerators, and Nvidia’s Vera Rubin-based solutions.
…

,
Nvidia offers restricted access to Vera CPU in first round of Linux benchmarks – 88-core monster competes with or beats Epyc and Xeon in selected tests

NVIDIA’s new server CPU doesn’t win outright in most tests, but it’s running very close to AMD’s EPYC, which is incredible for a first-generation custom server core from NVIDIA.
…

,
Taiwan raids 12 locations in its first formal crackdown on Nvidia AI chip smuggling — hunts three fugitives for document forgery, fraudulent declarations in Super Micro smuggling case

Getting banned Hopper or Blackwell chips into mainland data centers just became exponentially more fraught as Taiwan begins to crack down on smugglers.
…

,
Amazon’s Middle East data centers damaged by Iran drone and missile attacks will be down for several months during repairs — U.S. and Iran currently observing an uneasy truce, but renewed strikes possible if talks break down

Amazon says that it will take months before it can return its Bahrain and UAE data center back to full operational status. In the meantime, the company suspends billing for affected customers while also recommending that t…

,
Six AI data centers proposed for a small town of 7,000, equal to 51 Walmart Supercenters in 17 square mile area — four out of the seven town council members have resigned from their positions as town fights back

The residents of Archbald, Pennsylvania have started pushing back against the six planned data centers in the town, which will take up about 14% of its land area.
…

,
Maine governor vetoes bill that bans large new data centers — says legislature should’ve exempted one particular well-supported data center

Governor Janet Mills vetoed a bill that would have enacted a moratorium on all data center projects because it would affect one site to be built on a former paper mill in Jay, Franklin County.
…

,
IBM spruces up its mainframes with new support for modern Arm workloads — firm teams up with Arm to run Arm workloads on IBM Z mainframes

Cloud-native AI and data intensive workloads coming to IBM Z and LinuxONE systems as IBM wants to make its machines more relevant for today’s workloads.
…

,
US startup plans to build data centers inside ocean-based wind turbines, servers water cooled via chilly North Sea — each leg houses a data center, firm set to launch three-legged prototype in Norway’s North Sea this year

Offshore wind turbines could house up to a 12-megawatt data center, drawing power directly from the winds blowing on the sea while using the cold ocean water for cooling.
…

,
Microsoft turns to superconductors for distributing power to its AI data centers — zero-resistance cables could reduce power losses and produce zero heat

Microsoft wants to use superconducting cables to transport electricity with zero losses, allowing it to save space and build more data centers without putting more strain on the grid.
…

,