Apple Inc. is laying the groundwork for an expansion of its soon-to-open Prineville data center. The company has submitted a master plan to the city for two new buildings designed to house the company's servers.
Once completed, these buildings will probably look unlike anything else in town.
Joshua Smith has seen the designs. He's a senior planner with the city of Prineville. He says unlike Facebook's buildings, which are essentially big boxes, each of Apple's buildings consists of one long spine with eight free-standing data halls or pods jutting off the side.
The plan appears to be scalable, which means Apple could bring more of these pods online as demand dictates. Smith says the company plans to move quickly.
"The indication is that they want to have two of these data halls or pods up and running by next year and they'll go from there."
In the meantime, Facebook also seems poised for an expansion. Last week, the company submitted an application to build a third data center in Prineville.
