Nuclear power of course is proven in many environments, including the military, but its application requires a level of diligence, security and protection that far exceeds what is typically associated with data centers. Yes, the compromise of a data center can have far-ranging implications, but the breach of a facility that houses a nuclear reactor is particularly concerning for obvious reasons.
The push to embrace nuclear power for data centers reflects other truths as well. At Atombeam, we believe the AI data landscape requires more than just new approaches to power generation. We believe it requires a fundamental shift, one that is built around an entirely new approach to data.
For decades the technology stalwarts that comprise Big Tech have prided themselves on reducing the carbon footprint associated with innumerable tasks, whether it’s negating the need for long commutes with remote work or even the well-known and often discussed efforts to make data centers more efficient by using renewable sources of power.
AI and its thirst for compute power has upended these efforts, and brought us to a crossroads. Innovation – namely in the form of more powerful chips, more powerful processors, and larger data centers – has always enabled us to keep pace with the sheer growth of data and the workloads associated with it, at least until now.
But AI, and the sheer amount of power it requires is far different. As Big Tech’s efforts to embrace and use nuclear power reveal, the status quo is no longer sufficient. A new approach is needed.
At Atombeam we believe the time has come to focus not just on more powerful hardware and more powerful facilities, but on data itself. Today, the ability to make data far denser and far lighter with Data-as-Codewords – innovation that exponentially decreases power usage – is more prescient than ever.
