Extreme densification has significant implications for physical infrastructure from higher voltage power distribution to liquid cooling and beyond
The data center industry is being reshaped by powerful macro forces fueled by the rise of AI and accelerated compute. These forces, defined in the Vertiv™ Frontiers report, are influencing every layer of digital infrastructure, spanning technologies, architectures, and industry segments.
At the center of this transformation is extreme densification - the defining macro force whose effects are felt across the entire data center and technology landscape.
AI has transformed what is required for chip and rack density to unlock the performance needed for this level of compute. We are seeing rack densities that quickly transformed from six to 10kW yesterday, to 140kW racks to support today's models; quickly advancing towards 600 plus kW racks and beyond. We're now moving into the age of the MW rack. That has tremendous implications for the underlying infrastructure in the data center space.
New power architectures
For example, from a power perspective, this densification is leading to exploration of new power architectures (as explored in the Vertiv Frontiers trend: Powering up for AI). We need to rethink certain paradigms that have been held sacred for the last couple of decades. To physically deploy the amount of electricity required, we may need to reduce the amperage and conductor sizes. We must think through different architectures and topologies within power that will enable us to overcome some of the physical barriers to data center densification. Now and in the future, that will boil down to thinking about different AC power architectures, deploying and thinking through higher voltage DC architectures within the white space and the overall data center facility.
Liquid cooling: basis of design for high density
There are also implications for cooling. Liquid cooling has grown tremendously, and it's been exciting to be at the forefront of that innovation (as explored in the Vertiv Frontiers trend: Adaptive, resilient liquid cooling). Liquid cooling is becoming the basis of design for high density deployments. It's gone from a niche application just a few years ago, to something mainstream. We're going to see continued innovation not only to keep pace with the densities at a chip, rack, and white space levels, but also around system design, control and performance to unlock greater resiliency and performance.
At the same time, while we're scaling up and densities increase, we're also seeing a scaling out of the infrastructure (gigawatt scaling a speed is another macro force identified in Vertiv Frontiers). The size of the facilities required to operate and unlock the performance, and the compute capacity required are growing to tremendous proportions. We're seeing 100MW and 200MW buildings quickly scaling to gigawatt campuses, with dramatic implications for the quantity and size of infrastructure, and the distances that pieces of equipment will have to be run to connect to each other.
Collectively, these forces and trends will require a different paradigm and a different level of thinking about how we design data centers as an overall, integrated system.
Extreme densification is one of the macro forces reshaping data center infrastructure identified in Vertiv Frontiers.