F E A T U R E
DESIGNING FOR THE NEXT GENERATION OF HIGH-DENSITY DATA CENTRES
The rapid rise of AI workloads is driving rack power densities to unprecedented levels, forcing hyperscale data centres to rethink everything from power delivery and protection to rack design and monitoring. As per-rack loads surge beyond 60kW and GPU servers demand ever larger power supplies, traditional strategies are no longer sufficient. Prabhakar Muthuswamy, Senior Product Manager at Raritan, a brand of Legrand, explains how their new era of intelligent PDUs, advanced metrics and bespoke infrastructure is balancing efficiency, uptime and global expansion. h
How has the surge in AI infrastructure, from 20kW to over 60kW per rack, changed power-delivery strategies in hyperscale data centres?
A few years ago, we were all talking about 20kW per rack; now, that conversation starts at 60kW. In some deployments, we are seeing 150kW per rack, with discussions already moving toward 200kW.
So, what has changed? The power supply for these GPU-driven servers has drastically increased. CPUs are nearing 600W, and GB300 GPUs are nearing 1200W. Five years ago, we didn’ t even talk about a one-kilowatt power supply; now we are talking about 6.6kW. This shift has fundamentally changed how data centre architects design infrastructure and how we build our PDUs.
Another major change is geographic expansion. Initially, most hyperscale data centres were heavily concentrated in North America. However, we are starting to see expansion worldwide due to land availability, power access, and water resources becoming increasingly constrained. As a result, many hyperscalers are looking to build in Europe and Asia Pacific instead.
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