Blackwell · Nvidia · AMD · San Francisco · U.S. · Ars Technica
SPAN’s approach could avoid the significant land apply and water consumption issues that come with major data center projects
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Starting in 2027, SPAN plans to scale up to 80,000 XFRA nodes across the United States and provide more than 1 gigawatt of distributed compute.
Key facts
- Starting in 2027, SPAN plans to scale up to 80,000 XFRA nodes across the United States and provide more than 1 gigawatt of distributed compute
- A video animation distributed by SPAN suggests that an individual XFRA node would hold 16 Nvidia RTX Pro 6000 Blackwell Server Edition GPUs along with 4 AMD EPYC Server CPUs, backed by 3 terabytes
- The “distributed data center solution” announced by the San Francisco startup SPAN would deploy thousands of XFRA nodes that contain liquid-cooled Nvidia RTX Pro 6000 Blackwell Server Edition GPUs
- Thieves may also see XFRA nodes alongside houses as a tempting target, given that the Nvidia GPUs within can each sell for around $10,000
Summary
Data centers may be coming to your neighborhood as side installations associated with new homes—and in exchange would offer subsidized electricity and Internet access along with backup batteries to homeowners. The “distributed data center solution” announced by the San Francisco startup SPAN would deploy thousands of XFRA nodes that contain liquid-cooled Nvidia RTX Pro 6000 Blackwell Server Edition GPUs operating with minimal noise, according to a press release. “Data centers are loud, ugly, and often drive up local electricity bills,” said Chris Lander, vice president of XFRA at SPAN, in correspondence with Ars. SPAN’s approach could avoid the significant land use and water consumption issues that come with huge data center projects, which may help sidestep growing community opposition to such developments.