"The data center industry is racing towards 1 megawatt per rack. During Schneider Electric's Global Innovation Summit, we even heard from Nvidia about plans for 2 and even 4 megawatt per rack that are already on its roadmap. It's fair to say that data centers will drastically transform over the course of just a couple of years. The implications of these giant leaps for power, cooling, and facility design are significant."
"The traditional data center architecture was dominated by one or two socket x86 servers, primarily from Intel. Those x86 servers rarely exceeded 5-10 kilowatts per rack. Until the rise of AI workloads over the past years, the industry as a whole and Intel in particular were quite happy to keep it that way. However, with AI workloads operating at 40-50 kilowatts per rack, with some deployments exceeding 100 kilowatts per rack, that position became untenable."
Data center designs must rapidly adapt to AI-driven power densities moving toward one megawatt per rack, with vendors planning two-to-four megawatt racks. Traditional architectures centered on one- or two-socket x86 servers rarely exceeded 5–10 kilowatts per rack, which delayed adoption of high-density cooling solutions. AI workloads now drive individual racks to 40–50 kilowatts and above, with some exceeding 100 kilowatts, rendering air cooling insufficient. The shift requires fundamental changes in power distribution, liquid cooling adoption, and overall facility architecture to manage thermal loads and electrical capacity at rack scale. Operational practices, procurement, and industry standards will need to evolve to enable safe, efficient deployment of megawatt-scale racks.
Read at Techzine Global
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