Hungry for resources, AI redefines the data center calculus

While there’s more than 10% of capacity available in Europe, Latin America, and the greater Asia Pacific region in 2024, the growth of AI, cloud computing providers, and other power-hungry applications requires a new approach to data center operations, the report says. “High-performance computing will require rapid innovation in data center design and technology to manage rising power density needs,” it adds.

A current data center building boom isn’t likely to stop soon, with credit rating firm Moody’s, in a July 15 report, projecting that global capacity will double in the next five years. But with finding space for new data centers becoming increasingly difficult, some experts say it’s a good time for data center operators, cloud computing providers, and companies running AI and other major workloads in house to think about replacing old hardware instead.

Efficiency is money

Modern CPUs not only offer more computing power, but they also are more power efficient than older models and generally take up much less data center space, some advocates say. Using new CPUs, data centers can consolidate servers running tens of thousands of cores into less than 50 cores, says Robert Hormuth, corporate vice president of architecture and strategy in the Data Center Solutions Group at AMD.