North America: What the America Competes Act means for data centers

In early February, the America Competes Act passed through the House (222-210 along party lines). The much-debated and somewhat controversial Act contains provisions relating to data centers, supercomputers, and quantum computing. 

Several sub-sections have been added to Section 304 of the Department of Energy Research and Innovation Act, including an Energy-Efficient Computing Program'. This would require the Secretary of the DOE to "support a program of fundamental research, development, and demonstration of energy-efficient computing and data center technologies relevant to advanced computing applications, including high-performance computing, artificial intelligence, and scientific machine learning."

Likewise, in an effort to drive forward the US's sustainability pledges, the department will also pair up with the private sector, National Laboratories and higher education to research into and develop technologies to "decrease" the energy requirements of "advanced computing practices." It will also work on the development and creation of green tech. Further to this, the department will work on quantum communications equipment with these same key players. 

A four-year plan outlining the parameters of the work on the quantum network will be set out within 180 days of the Act passing, with a budget of $100 million for each fiscal year (until 2026) to turn the plan into action. 

Moreover, there will also be the formation of a department-wide strategy for balancing on-premises and cloud-based computing and scientific data management." Another area that will be looked at in more depth is the role big data analytics, simulations, and artificial intelligence have to play in developing heterogeneous computing system architectures.