Dynamic Power Solutions for the Future of Energy Storage
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What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
You know, you're talking of like 75 kilowatts of average power or something, and then peak power to 150 kilowatts. So in your latest Blackwell racks, it's 150 kilowatts of that peak. But what they have to do is, because of the excess headroom they need, you need almost 250 kilowatts of power. And that's basically what you have in an NV72 AI rack, right? They've gone up like 25 times in like five years. And we just heard from NVIDIA that they're going to a megawatt in a rack in the next two years.
Welcome to another edition of Not Your Father's Data Center. I am Raymond Hawkins, your host. Once again, we are going to talk about technology. Today, we are joined by a friend of the program all the way from Cambridge, England. Dr. Sai Chavaretti, the CEO and founder of Niobolt. They do batteries, and he's going to explain to us how we might want to hang on to some of the energy that we have and how that might change what we do in the data center. Doctor, how are you today?
I'm great. Thank you, Sai.
What is Dr Sai Shivareddy’s background and how did he get to Cambridge?
So nice to meet you.
All right. Well, we'll go with Sai the rest of the way if you're okay with it.
Yeah, that's great. Please.
Sai, you're in Cambridge today recording, right?
Indeed. Yep.
All right.
Yeah, it's getting cold, but not as cold as probably where you are.
Well, we're doing all right still. I'm in the southeast, so we get a little bit longer hang on to summer, but we'll enjoy a very brief winter where I live, for which I'm very grateful. So, Cy, if you don't mind, can you give us a little bit of insight into you before we get into Nia Bolt and what you guys are doing on the battery technology side? Can you back up and tell us Where'd you grow up? Where'd you go to school? How'd you get to Cambridge? You go back as far as you like and give as much detail as you like, but we'd love to hear a little bit about you before we get into batteries and the data center space.
Absolutely. So I was born in India. I grew up there, went to school, at least like middle school, high school there, and also an undergrad program, studied physics, naturally curious about the world around me and how it all came together. So try to dig as deep as possible. And normally you end up doing a PhD if you try to go deep. I found myself on a scholarship to Cambridge because there was a history there. You know, we spoke about some history in the past and the university goes back 800 years. And growing up in India, there was a stronger connection to the UK, just historically, right? So I had somehow met a professor who brought me on, and yeah.
Help orient us. What year was this? What year did you leave school in India and go to the UK?
Okay, so this was over 20 years ago. About half my life being in the world of research and materials and energy. But before that, I had no clue where I would land. Everything, science was interesting. But the thing that was changing and felt interesting was both the new world of energy and the power that would drive the next century. This was turn of century around 2000. Right, right, right, 2000, right. There was that world of tech, and then there's a world of infrastructure around, and obviously climate and energy were front and center after that first decade. So that influenced what subjects I selected, or at least you feel like you can do something useful. So either you figure it out along the way, or you kind of see, okay, this is a general direction and
So there was nanotechnology at that time and nanomaterials, and this was a very big popular science. You know, around 2000, there was a lot of discoveries in new materials at the nanoscopic level that could fundamentally change many fields, right, from, you know, photonics and computing. I mean, yeah, actually, that's a big part of what I was excited about Cambridge too. So, you know, this was 2007, 8, and I got this PhD. This department was looking at the 45 nanometer nodes. So you're talking about semiconductors and data centers, right? There was some connection between semiconductor processes, materials that worked at the nano level.
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Chapters
5 chapters
1
What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
0:00–1:09
2
What is Dr Sai Shivareddy’s background and how did he get to Cambridge?
1:09–8:56
3
How did Dr Shivareddy transition from lab research to founding Niable?
8:56–27:14
4
Why is data center power demand rising and what are the implications?
27:14–34:48
5
What are the differences between capacitors, lead‑acid and lithium‑ion for backup power?
34:48–37:39
Speakers
2 identifiedMore from Not Your Father’s Data Center
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