We’ve come a long way since the first computer. The ENIAC (Electronic Numerical Integrator and Computer) weighed in at 27.27 metric tonnes (30 short tons), stood at just short of 2.5 meters tall and 30 meters long (8 feet tall by 100 feet long) and consumed 150kW of electricity.

Today, while we now have computers in our pockets via the smartphone, on wrists via smartwatches and in front of our eyes with products like Ray-Bay Meta glasses, businesses need computer system infrastructure capable of so much more. Don’t you want to reach the smartphone of a person running? Don’t you need to go through dozens of servers just to receive a ping, yet alone deliver information?

Today’s applications require high performance supercomputers to process AI queries and ML algorithms in real-time parsing through massive amounts of data. These applications are delivering ground-breaking research, rich user experiences, and enabling new discoveries that can impact our health, our environment, and much more.

Decentralized computing

I’ve spent years in GPU research and led the team that built what was at that time the world’s first GPU supercomputer. Now, seeing the rate of new applications and the high performance that is required, I believe the industry is quickly moving toward decentralization – where individual companies will need control over the infrastructure that drives their business success.

Many of these new innovations are coming from the start-up community where each entrepreneur sees upwards of 25% of their venture capital spent on renting computing power from the big cloud vendors. Even larger, established companies don’t want to give control of cloud infrastructure to others. For small and large companies alike, building a data center filled with supercomputers can take years requiring expertise outside of their core competency and that comes at a high financial cost, not to mention obtaining acreage. Once built, it is costly to obtain the flexibility when business needs change.

Additionally, environmental concerns are very real and building supercomputers and data centers that have low carbon emissions, low energy usage and are operated in a sustainable manner is important.

Enter Modular Data Centers It’s a tall order to provide the infrastructure that meets all of these challenges: high performance computing power, managing the out-of-control thermals, faster time to market/revenue, with lower costs while being environmentally sustainable.

Legacy data centers are clearly not meeting these needs. Modular Data Centers (MDCs) address many of the challenges described, particularly those associated with building a traditional data center (land, building costs, hiring the expertise). And working with a provider with data center expertise means coming to market can be faster.

However, as we started to build Ecoblox, we saw that existing MDC providers could be faster in getting customers operational. They also can provide customers options as their business needs change. If they had the right supply chain relationships, time to market could be faster, and costs could be lower while having access to the latest hardware innovations. This can be achieved by investing in the ecosystem which data centers rely upon. That’s what we do today.

Really Standing Apart in the Ecosystem

The founding team here at ECOBLOX believes the ecosystem is so important we incorporated ECO into our name. Here’s why:

1. While we and others add value in reselling high-performance computers combined with other technology to deliver high-performance data centers, ECOBLOX has privileged status with our partners. For example, we are the only NVIDIA solutions partner in the MEA region. For our customers, these relationships mean lower costs, faster access to the latest innovations, and faster time to be operational.
2. We are committed to investing in ecosystem innovations. In partnership with SingularityNet Foundation, for example, we are building the world’s first modular supercomputer dedicated to decentralized AGI research, while also building High- Performance Computing (HPC) and AI data centers. This demonstrates our commitment to meeting our customers’ future needs.

3. Sustainability is not just a lofty goal for us and we aim to work to benefit the entire data center industry. To that end, we’ve partnered with Metasphere and PureSky Registry to co-develop a carbon-aware routing protocol which aims to reduce the carbon footprint of Internet and data center operations. By optimizing energy usage and reducing emissions, this collaboration recognizes the importance of sustainability in high- performance computing. It also means our customers can choose infrastructure that contributes to their sustainability goals and in meeting regulatory compliances.

The challenges ahead of the data center industry are tall. We are up for the challenge and invite you to join a thriving ecosystem that provides the high-performance computing you need today with a commitment to meeting the needs of tomorrow. Most importantly, our MDC’s will be able to become a cool home for generations of silicon to come.