DC BLOX, a leading provider of secure, reliable data centers across the Southeast, announces the expansion of its Birmingham, AL and Greenville, SC data centers. The rapid growth in two of DC BLOX’s most recent markets reflects strong local demand for core data center and connectivity infrastructure. The Greenville facility is adding its second data hall since announcing its official opening in January of 2022, while Birmingham will deploy DC BLOX’s newest design to accommodate the need for High-Performance Compute (HPC) applications in its market.
The Birmingham data center expansion includes an additional data hall with a new design that will accommodate cabinets for both High Performance Compute (HPC) as well as standard cabinets within the same space. DC BLOX Birmingham’s new data hall will support up to 2.4MW of 3N/2 distributed redundant power, consistent with the concurrently maintainable Tier III design of its standard data halls. The new hall is designed to accommodate up to 240 standard retail cabinets and 36 HPC-capable cabinets capable of supporting 34kW of power per cabinet.
Growth of the HPC market is being driven by a confluence of factors including the availability of lower-cost HPC systems based on commodity hardware, the advancement of specialized processor accelerators (e.g., GPUs), the increased use of Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning (AI/ML) applications, and the competitive advantages derived from aggregating and analyzing large data sets. HPC applications require significantly more power per square foot from their data centers than traditional IT resources. Many industries, including government, universities, manufacturing, and bio-sciences, have a growing need for HPC technology but don’t have access to the data center, connectivity and power infrastructure needed to run it locally.
“DC BLOX’s new “flex space” design enables the efficient allocation of floor space and power between HPC and standard cabinets to accommodate variations in local demand,” according to John Dumler, VP of Design and Engineering for DC BLOX. “This new data hall design will help not only Birmingham but can also be added to any of our data centers across our markets to respond to local customers’ needs.”
In addition, construction of a second data hall in DC BLOX’s Greenville data center is underway, designed specifically to accommodate a large enterprise customer. DC BLOX Greenville’s new 9,000 square foot data hall will adhere to the same concurrently maintainable design found in all of DC BLOX’s facilities and will initially supply 1MW of redundant power.
“We are seeing growing demand for secure and reliable data center services across our markets,” said Kurt Stoever, Chief Operating Officer for DC BLOX. “DC BLOX is very pleased to be able to not only meet these growing needs with state-of-the-art data center and connectivity infrastructure, but to adjust to specific market needs with our innovative HPC-capable data hall design.”
DC BLOX is the only secure, reliable Tier III-designed multi-tenant data center operator in Alabama and South Carolina. Most recently, the company launched the DC BLOX Connectivity eXchange (DCB-CX), an interconnection platform that enables participants anywhere within the DC BLOX connectivity ecosystem to peer across a high-bandwidth, low-latency software-defined fabric, providing virtual connections to built-in carriers, public cloud providers, regional Internet Exchanges (IX) and other participating entities. The launch of the DCB-CX addresses the connectivity deficit in its markets, aiding the accelerated pace of digital transformation of its customers across the Southeast US and beyond.