F E A T U R E

Schneider Electric’ s Matthew Baynes, VP, Secure Power & Data Centres in the UK & Ireland, explores how turning waste energy from AI and high performance infrastructure can be a net zero advantage.

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Accelerated compute and AI adoption are driving a significant build out of increasingly sophisticated digital infrastructure systems – all of which feature high-density racks and servers, increased energy demands and the transition towards hybrid and liquid-cooled systems, at a time unlike anything seen before.

Whitespace equipment, for example, has become heavier with implications for racks and row architectures and GPU configurations. Floor loading has become a key consideration for deploying GPU-accelerated servers and power demands have gone from 40 – 60 kW per rack to 100 +, with densities expected to reach 1MW in the near future.

At the same time, hyperscalers, neoclouds and colocation operators have embraced new cooling techniques to cope with increased thermal demands, and direct to chip liquid cooling, combined with air-cooled servers, is now the leading cooling topology.

This change, combined with the energy and resource demands of AI, has also impacted sustainability efforts, with many operators left struggling to meet both regulations and

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