In announcing the deal, Jensen Huang emphasized the client aspect of the deal, saying future Intel chips would have Nvidia GPUs baked into them instead of Intel’s own GPU technology. But there will be impact for the server business as well. There are two things the analysts all agree on:  AMD is the big loser in this deal. It had the advantage of CPU and GPU combination that Intel and Nvidia didn’t have individually. It was apparent in supercomputers like Frontier and El Capitan, which are an all-AMD design of CPUs and GPUs working in tandem. Now the two companies are joined at the hip and will have a competitive offering in due time. The second area of agreement is that the future of Jaguar Shores, Intel’s AI accelerator based on its GPU technology and the Gaudi AI accelerator is uncertain. “Nvidia already has solutions here and it doesn’t make sense for Intel to work on a redundant product that needs to be marketed over an established one,” said Nguyen. A significant event coming from this deal is that Intel is adopting the Nvidia proprietary NVlink high-speed interconnect protocols. “This means that Intel has essentially determined its ability to compete head-to-head with Nvidia in the current large scale AI marketplace, despite its best efforts, have mostly failed,” wrote Jack Gold of J. Gold Associates in a research note. Gold notes that Nvidia already uses a few Xeon data center chips to power their largest systems, and the x86 chips provide most of the controls and pre-processing that their large-scale GPU racks require. By accelerating the performance of the Xeon, the GPU benefits as well. That leaves the question mark hanging over Nvidia’s Arm CPUs, which is likely to continue for “niche areas,” Gold wrote. “But with this announcement, it now

Mukul  Girotra, Ecolab: The AI infrastructure revolution is forcing a complete rethinking of how thermal, water, and power systems interact. It’s breaking down decades of siloed engineering approaches that are now proving inadequate given the increased rack demands. Traditionally, data centers were designed with separate teams managing power, cooling, and IT equipment. AI scale requires these systems to operate holistically, with real-time coordination between power management, thermal control, and workload orchestration. Here’s how Ecolab is addressing integration: We extend our digitally enabled approach from site to chip, spanning cooling water, direct-to-chip systems, and adiabatic units, driving cleanliness, performance, and optimized water and energy use across all layers of cooling infrastructure.  Through collaborations like the one with Digital Realty, our AI-driven water conservation solution is expected to drive up to 15% water savings, significantly reducing demand on local water systems.  Leveraging the ECOLAB3D™ platform, we provide proactive analytics and real-time data to optimize water and power use at the asset, site and enterprise levels, creating real operational efficiency and turning cooling management into a strategic advantage. We provide thermal, hydro and chemistry expertise that considers power constraints, IT equipment requirements, and day-to-day facility operational realities. This approach prevents the sub-optimization that can occur when these systems are designed in isolation.  Crucially, we view cooling through the lens of the water-energy nexus: choices at the rack or chiller level affect both Power Usage Effectiveness (PUE) and Water Usage Effectiveness (WUE) of a data center, so our recommendations balance energy, water, and lifecycle considerations to deliver reliable performance and operational efficiency. The companies that will succeed in AI infrastructure deployment are those that abandon legacy siloed approaches and embrace integrated thermal management as a core competitive capability.

Becky Wacker, Trane:  Focusing on post-initial construction CapEx expenditures, finding a balance between capital expenditure (CapEx) and operational expenditure (OpEx) is crucial for efficient capital deployment for data center operators. This balance can be influenced by ownership strategy, cash position, budget planning duration, sustainability goals, and contract commitments and durations with end users. At Trane, we focus on understanding these key characteristics of operations and tailor our ongoing support to best meet the unique business objectives and needs of our customers. We address these challenges through three major approaches: 1.    Smart Services Solutions:  Our smart services solutions improve system efficiency through AI-driven tools and a large fleet of truck-based service providers. By keeping system components operating at peak efficiency, preventing unanticipated failures, and balancing the critical needs of both digital monitoring and well-trained technicians, we maintain critical systems. This approach reduces OpEx through efficient operation and minimizes unplanned CapEx expenditures. Consequently, this enables improved budgeting and the ability to invest in additional data centers or other business ventures. 2.   Sustainable and Flexible System Design:  As a global climate innovator, Trane designs our products and collaborates with engineers and owners to integrate these products into highly efficient system solutions. We apply this approach not only in the initial design of the data center but also in planning for future flexibility as demand increases or components require replacement. This proactive strategy reduces ongoing utility bills, minimizes CapEx for upgrades, and helps meet sustainability goals. By focusing on both immediate and long-term efficiency, Trane ensures that data center operators can maintain optimal performance while adhering to environmental standards. 3.   Flexible Financial Solutions:  Trane’s Energy Services solutions have a 25+ year history of providing Energy Performance Contracting solutions. These can be leveraged to provide upgrades and energy optimization to cooling, power, water, and

Oracle’s ‘Astonishing’ Quarter Stuns Wall Street, Targeting Cloud Growth and Global Data Center Expansion Oracle’s FY Q1 2026 earnings report on September 9 — along with its massive cloud backlog — stunned Wall Street with its blow-out Q1 earnings. The market reacted positively to the huge growth in infrastructure revenue and performance obligations (RPO), a measure of future revenue from customer contracts, which indicates significant growth potential and Oracle’s increasing role in AI technology—even as earnings and revenue missed estimates. After the earnings announcement, Oracle stock soared more than 36%, marking its biggest daily gain since December 1992 and adding more than $250 billion in market value to the company. The company’s stock surge came even as the software giant’s earnings and lower-than-expected revenue. Leaders reported company’s RPO jumped about 360% in the quarter to $455 billion, indicating its potential growth and demand for its cloud services and infrastructure. As a result, Oracle CEO Safra Catz projects that its GPU‑heavy Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI) business will grow 77% to $18 billion in its current fiscal year (2026) and soar to $144 billion in 2030. The earnings announcement also made Oracle’s Co-Founder, Chairman and CTO Larry Ellison the richest person in the world briefly, with shares of Oracle surging as much as 43%. By the end of the trading day, his wealth increased nearly $90 billion to $383 billion, just shy of Tesla CEO Elon Musk’s $384 billion fortune. Also on the earnings call, Ellison announced that in October at the Oracle AI World event, the company will introduce the Oracle AI Database OCI for customers to use the Large Language Model (LLM) of their choice—including Google’s Gemini, OpenAI’s ChatGPT, xAI’s Grok, etc.—directly on top of the Oracle Database to easily access and analyze all existing database data. Capital Expenditure Strategy These astonishing numbers are due

IEEE 802.3df-2024. The IEEE 802.3df-2024 standard, completed in February 2024 marked a watershed moment for AI data center networking. The 800 Gigabit Ethernet specification provides the foundation for next-generation AI clusters. It uan 8-lane parallel structure that enables flexible port configurations from a single 800GbE port: 2×400GbE, 4×200GbE or 8×100GbE depending on workload requirements. The standard maintains backward compatibility with existing 100Gb/s electrical and optical signaling. This protects existing infrastructure investments while enabling seamless migration paths. UEC 1.0. The Ultra Ethernet Consortium represents the industry’s most ambitious attempt to optimize Ethernet for AI workloads. The consortium released its UEC 1.0 specification in 2025, marking a critical milestone for AI networking. The specification introduces modern RDMA implementations, enhanced transport protocols and advanced congestion control mechanisms that eliminate the need for traditional lossless networks. UEC 1.0 enables packet spraying at the switch level with reordering at the NIC, delivering capabilities previously available only in proprietary systems The UEC specification also includes Link Level Retry (LLR) for lossless transmission without traditional Priority Flow Control, addressing one of Ethernet’s historical weaknesses versus InfiniBand.LLR operates at the link layer to detect and retransmit lost packets locally, avoiding expensive recovery mechanisms at higher layers. Packet Rate Improvement (PRI) with header compression reduces protocol overhead, while network probes provide real-time congestion visibility. InfiniBand extends architectural advantages to 800Gb/s InfiniBand emerged in the late 1990s as a high-performance interconnect designed specifically for server-to-server communication in data centers. Unlike Ethernet, which evolved from local area networking,InfiniBand was purpose-built for the demanding requirements of clustered computing. The technology provides lossless, ultra-low latency communication through hardware-based flow control and specialized network adapters. The technology’s key advantage lies in its credit-based flow control. Unlike Ethernet’s packet-based approach, InfiniBand prevents packet loss by ensuring receiving buffers have space before transmission begins. This eliminates

Land and Expand is a monthly feature at Data Center Frontier highlighting the latest data center development news, including new sites, land acquisitions and campus expansions. Here are some of the new and notable developments from hyperscale and colocation data center operators about which we’ve been reading lately. Caroline County, VA, Approves 650-Acre Data Center Campus from CleanArc Caroline County, Virginia, has approved redevelopment of the former Virginia Bazaar property in Ruther Glen into a 650-acre data center campus in partnership with CleanArc Data Centers Operating, LLC. On September 9, 2025, the Caroline County Board of Supervisors unanimously approved an economic development performance agreement with CleanArc to transform the long-vacant flea market site just off I-95. The agreement allows for the phased construction of three initial data center buildings, each measuring roughly 500,000 square feet, which CleanArc plans to lease to major operators. The project represents one of the county’s largest-ever private investments. While CleanArc has not released a final capital cost, county filings suggest the development could reach into the multi-billion-dollar range over its full buildout. Key provisions include: Local hiring: At least 50 permanent jobs at no less than 150% of the prevailing county wage. Revenue sharing: Caroline County will provide annual incentive grants equal to 25% of incremental tax revenue generated by the campus. Water stewardship: CleanArc is prohibited from using potable county water for data center cooling, requiring the developer to pursue alternative technologies such as non-potable sources, recycled water, or advanced liquid cooling systems. Local officials have emphasized the deal’s importance for diversifying the county’s tax base, while community observers will be watching closely to see which cooling strategies CleanArc adopts in order to comply with the water-use restrictions. Google to Build $10 Billion Data Center Campus in Arkansas Moses Tucker Partners, one of Arkansas’