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The End Of Massive Data Centers?

Fractal technology is one of several new tech stacks challenging the narrative that data centers will need nuclear reactors. We do not need data centers.

https://fractalcomputing.substack.com/p/the-end-of-massive-data-centers

Excerpt:

The overwhelming narrative in the A.I. investment community is that Microsoft, Google and Amazon will go nuclear - meaning they need nuclear energy to power the massive data centers for A.I. systems.

As Fractal proves every day, there is not a commercial application on planet earth that needs a data center.

The reason these massive data centers are needed is because every tech stack today is horrendously I/O bound.

Not everyone on this feed is a techie - and we do not write for techies. If you are a super geek, go to the website FractalWeb.App and you can read more about things like architecture.

Back to I/O.

I/O means input output. It is the bane of all computer processing today and the Fractal team reduced it to such a level that it eliminates the need for data centers - period.

What’s I/O?

Every compute instruction when you hit the enter key goes down the tunnel to the database and looks for your answer. The answer in your corporate billing DB might get name from one field, a transaction from a second field, time of use from a third - and each one of those is an I/O event.

This is no big deal to you - it happens in seconds.

But if you are running the billing system for 10 million customers, those I/O events add up. They need a massive data center to run those bills.

Those data centers consume about 4% of the entire electric energy used in the world.

Here is a customer story.

An electric utility has a billing system for 1.2 million customers.

It runs on a massive Oracle cluster - costing tens of millions of dollars a year.

It takes 4 hours every day - using all their compute power - to run those bills.

So at the end of the month, they have 4 hours a day clock time, for 24 days = 92 hours to generate those bills.

The billing system was rewritten in Fractal in less than 60 days.

It runs all the same calculations - it creates every bill, and since it is a parallel system, it checks the main system so every bill is correct before it goes to the customer.

Instead of a massive data center it runs on an Intel NUC, costing $4,000, about 8 inches, x 8 inches.

Instead of using massive power, it uses the power of a table lamp.

Instead of running for 92 clock hours, it runs for less than 5 minutes.

That is why the Fractal team believes, and is ready to prove, there is no need for a data center if I/O is properly managed.

For you new readers, if you think it is easy to sell this to large corporations, you would be mistaken.

We are often asked “…..so why doesn’t everyone use Fractal if it can save them literally billions of dollars a year?”

That is why we are writing this Substack - because we are experts in bringing massively disruptive technology to market.

We are the guys who built the eBay fraud engine when nobody could stop on-line auction fraud. Our team built the TSA No-Fly List underlying technology and the fraud tech for about 70% of the property/casualty insurance industry.

Disruptive technology is, well, disruptive.

So the people with empires hate it - they will never adopt a technology that threatens their world view.

.....we do not focus on the CIO with an empire and a career to protect.

One source of introductions is private equity.

.....Private equity also loves to take out costs which a company cannot themselves remove.

If you have a recalcitrant CIO running a multi-billion dollar organization, if he or she could have taken out the costs, they would have.

Private equity guys love to take out those costs - and since they sit in the board room it is a truly top-down selling experience.

Our customer is often someone who has a problem that simply cannot be resolved with conventional technology.

When relational database and other current obsolete technology cannot get you there, Fractal becomes a pretty easy sell for us.

.....Private equity also loves to take out costs which a company cannot themselves remove.

If you have a recalcitrant CIO running a multi-billion dollar organization, if he or she could have taken out the costs, they would have.

Private equity guys love to take out those costs - and since they sit in the board room it is a truly top-down selling experience.

Our customer is often someone who has a problem that simply cannot be resolved with conventional technology.

When relational database and other current obsolete technology cannot get you there, Fractal becomes a pretty easy sell for us.

Private equity also loves to take out costs which a company cannot themselves remove.

If you have a recalcitrant CIO running a multi-billion dollar organization, if he or she could have taken out the costs, they would have.

Private equity guys love to take out those costs - and since they sit in the board room it is a truly top-down selling experience.

Our customer is often someone who has a problem that simply cannot be resolved with conventional technology.

When relational database and other current obsolete technology cannot get you there, Fractal becomes a pretty easy sell for us.

Globalstar soars on Apple’s $1.5 billion satellite investment

https://spacenews.com/globalstar-soars-on-apples-1-5-billion-satellite-investment/

Excerpt:

Satellite operator Globalstar stock closed up more than 30% Nov. 1 after disclosing Apple’s plans to invest $1.5 billion in a new constellation to improve space-based communications for iPhones.

Apple would take a 20% equity stake in the constellation for $400 million, if the deal closes as expected Nov. 5, and make $1.1 billion in staggered cash prepayments to the operator to help fund the network.

Globalstar would use about $232 million of this cash to reduce its debt burden.

Apple has been using Globalstar’s current network of 31 L-band satellites since 2022 to enable its latest iPhones to access emergency services when terrestrial networks are unavailable.

While this space-enabled capability now also includes basic texting, the low Earth orbit (LEO) network does not provide more bandwidth-hungry services such as voice and broadband.

After Apple agreed to cover most of the costs to replenish the constellation in 2022, Globalstar awarded Canada’s MDA a $327 million contract to build 17 satellites, with options for up to nine additional satellites at $11.4 million each.

SpaceX is slated to begin launching those satellites next year.

However, Globalstar has declined to comment on what upgrades could be coming to iPhones that can access its refreshed constellation.

A Nov. 1 regulatory filing about Apple’s latest investment also does not include details about what Globalstar is calling an “Extended MSS [Mobile Satellite Services] Network.”

Globalstar and Apple did not respond to a request for comment.