Images: Midtown’s Coda to debut one of country’s most advanced data centers this week

Since the veil lifted on the Coda concept at Midtown’s booming Technology Square nearly five years ago, the project’s ability to greatly speed up Georgia Tech’s computing power has been marketed as a key virtue.

The 41,000-square-foot engine for making that happen is scheduled to be officially introduced this week.

Already home to the world’s tallest spiral staircase, Coda is scheduled to debut one of the country’s most advanced data centers—the “silent workhorses of the internet,” that is—at a Wednesday ceremony, according to officials with DataBank, which built the High-Performance Computing Center in partnership with Tech.

Centers like ATL1, as Midtown’s is called, enable data to be stored and transferred continuously between devices such as smart phones. ATL1 will also provide Tech with high-speed fiber access for the school’s latest super computers and unique datasets, all located within the new facility.

Researchers and industry workers at Coda’s adjacent 21-story, L-shaped tower will have access to all the above, officials say.

DataBank

DataBank reps relayed this interesting fact about one “innovative sustainable solution” at the data center in a recent announcement about its completion: “The waste energy of a water cooling system [at ATL1] will be conveyed to the building’s high-rise boilers,” they wrote. “This allows tenants to reuse and repurpose it to heat their offices in colder weather.”

The glassy Coda project stands between Spring and West Peachtree streets, just north of 4th Street.

It features 645,000 square feet of office space and 22,000 square feet of public-accessible, ground-floor restaurant and retail space, where Midtown’s latest food hall is coming together.

Early this year, Coda marked the first of three new Portman Architects-designed office towers to open on Midtown’s West Peachtree Street. The two-tower headquarters of healthcare giant Anthem is under construction on lots next door.

DataBank