Virtual Power Systems, the startup whose know-how automates dynamic energy distribution in knowledge facilities, has discovered a possibility to broaden its addressable market past conventional knowledge facilities: cryptocurrency mining services.
Unlike conventional knowledge facilities, crypto mining corporations are inclined to squeeze each final little bit of capability they will out of their computing infrastructure. VPS sees an enormous potential enterprise alternative in serving to them shut that tiny closing hole, the few % of capability they haven’t managed to harness.
VPS has “an engagement happening proper now, which is proving out the idea” with a crypto mining firm, Dean Nelson, the startup’s CEO, instructed DCK. He didn’t identify the possible consumer.
According to Nelson, VPS might help crypto miners in two methods: give them further energy in a rack when wanted and proper part imbalances. With these two capabilities, miners can theoretically compute with fewer interruptions and generate extra crypto tokens over time.
“Now, you may drive this stuff from 95 % [utilization] to 99 %,” he stated. “And then your quantity of kilowatt hours consumed to have the ability to do the work goes up.”
“So, there is a chance there. If I can do extra hash charges, I might truly make more cash.”
Each rack in a knowledge middle usually has a set quantity of energy provisioned to it. Data middle customers, particularly colocation knowledge middle clients, overprovision energy to keep away from hitting a ceiling sooner or later. Infrastructure can also be overprovisioned to offer backup in case one thing goes fallacious.
VPS says its software program and {hardware} releases that “stranded” capability to distribute energy extra effectively. It can provision extra energy to a rack or much less, relying on the quick want. A brand new functionality VPS has within the works is various reliability, additionally primarily based on software wants.
The crypto use case for VPS is completely different. Mining services don’t have the sort of mission-critical, can’t-ever-fail design objectives common knowledge facilities do, in order that they don’t provision further energy headroom or construct redundant infrastructure. They are optimized for optimum return on funding in {hardware} and vitality. Uptime is secondary.
With so little headroom, even a small spike or part imbalance can journey a circuit, and there’s no backup circuit to fall again on.
Of course, it’s not as important for mining tools to maintain working across the clock as, say, for a hospital’s IT techniques. Still, the much less downtime they expertise, the extra time they spend computing to generate cryptocurrency, which is the place Nelson believes VPS’s energy bursting and part balancing capabilities might help – particularly on the scale that some crypto mining companies have now reached.
Dean Nelson talked concerning the market alternative VPS sees within the cryptocurrency mining area as a part of a current wide-ranging interview for The Data Center Podcast. Listen to your complete dialog here or wherever you get your podcasts.
“I visited numerous these services and labored with numerous folks, they usually actually have… their enterprise down,” he stated. “It’s not this Wild West factor. It’s a enterprise.”
It’s not unusual for a miner to deploy a 2MW container for mining tools and get it up and working in two days at complete construct price of lower than $200,000 per megawatt, based on Nelson. By distinction, on the earth of conventional brick-and-mortar knowledge facilities, $7 million per megawatt is on the low finish of the value vary and 6 months is taken into account an outstandingly quick lead time.
The Cambridge Bitcoin Electricity Consumption Index presently estimates that the full energy load of the computing infrastructure mining bitcoin alone is about 10.65GW.
“There’s simply this large quantity [of crypto mining taking place] and it isn’t slowing down,” Nelson stated.
Hear our interview with VPS CEO Dean Nelson in full on The Data Center Podcast.
