across any industry, that artificial intelligence is here, and is here to stay. The use cases for AI are virtually limitless, from breakthroughs in medicine and enhanced farming techniques, to high-accuracy fraud prevention and personalised education.
To put this into perspective, consider the fact that a typical IT rack used to run workloads from 5-10kW, and racks running loads higher than 20kW were considered as high density. AI chips, however, can require around five times as much power and five times as much cooling capacity1 in the same space as a traditional server. So, we’re now seeing rack densities of 40kW per rack, and over 100kW in some instances.
Investments to upgrade the infrastructure needed to both power and cool AI hardware are substantial, and navigating these new design challenges is critical. The transition will not happen quickly: data centre and server room designers must look for ways to make power and cooling infrastructure future-ready, with considerations for the future growth of their workloads.