Data centers are one of the most critical components of modern business infrastructure, but they’re also one of the most energy-intensive. A single data center can require up to 50 times the energy per floor space when compared to a standard commercial office building. As a whole, these installations account for approximately 2% of the total electricity use in the United States and that number is only expected to climb.

So where is this upswell of demand coming from? And how can data center operators prepare in the short term to ensure long-term success? Today, we’ll examine:

• The biggest drivers of change within the data center market
• How data center design is changing to meet those challenges

The growing demand for energy is driven by an increasing need for more processing power as emerging technologies advance and gain traction with businesses and the general public. In fact, a Molex survey found that 58% of data center design engineers believe the need for higher functionality is a key trend forcing innovation in power design.

The development of high-speed Internet has been a game-changer in the way we communicate, work and live. In the early days of the Internet, dial-up connections were slow and clunky, limiting what we could do online. With the advent of broadband Internet in the late 1990s, faster connections became possible, allowing us to browse the web, download files and video chat without buffering or delays. As technology improved, the speeds of these connections skyrocketed, making it possible to stream high-quality video, experience AR and VR, and run complex applications in the cloud. Today, high-speed Internet service is a necessity for many people, and it continues to evolve, with developments like 5G and fiber optics promising faster speeds and greater reliability.

IoT encompasses the interconnected network of everyday devices, appliances and systems that can transmit and receive data via the Internet. It enables us to control every aspect of our environment like temperature, lighting and appliances. IoT connects everything from our smartphones to our cars, thermostats and even home security systems. IoT can automate processes to make life more convenient, such as smart home devices that can control, monitor and optimize our energy usage or remind us when we need to restock groceries. The IoT market is on a rapid growth trajectory and is projected to reach an estimated $621 billion by 2030, with technological advances allowing for even greater capabilities and possibilities.

According to Mosharaf Chowdhury, an associate professor of electrical engineering and computer science at the University of Michigan, training the GPT-3 model (a machine learning model that generates predictive text) just once can consume as much as 1,287 MWh of electricity. Looking at all the different ways in which AI is being used today and will be used in the future, it’s easy to imagine that as AI chatbots like ChatGPT replace the typical search engine, it will result in an exponential increase in the amount of computing power required to support processing user queries. In preparing for this future, it’s critical for data centers to use less energy while delivering more processing power and reliability.

To meet the needs of users in the ever-growing digital landscape, modern data centers are adapting on a few different fronts.

Designing a data center capable of meeting tomorrow’s challenges starts with the smallest components. Each piece of hardware must be optimized for reliability and efficiency. Shielded connectors, busbars and cables can be configured to minimize interference and maximize space. The latest generation of microprocessors provide both high performance and energy efficiency. Advances in modularity now allow servers to be more easily reconfigured and upgraded to accommodate future growth. And 224 Gbps-PAM4 system architecture is a necessity for the demands of generative AI.  

A data center is only as good as its uptime, so ensuring servers are online when and where they are needed is mission critical. Making certain that the energy supply remains uninterrupted requires a series of redundant backup systems. Today’s data centers use generators and capacitive banks to guarantee a consistent supply of power. Increasingly, the industry is also seeing a shift toward renewables generated on site through the installation of solar panels and wind turbines. On a smaller scale, edge, far-edge and microdata centers are going so far as to include lithium-ion battery backups to every shelf.

More processing means more heat generation, so maintaining growing data center systems at scale requires innovative and unique approaches to thermal management. Liquid immersion cooling in particular is a technique that’s recently been receiving attention in the data center power environment. In 2020, Microsoft’s Project Natick demonstrated that a sealed container on the ocean floor could safely and reliably house 864 servers and 27.6 petabytes of storage for two years with the cooling effect of the seawater contributing to a demonstrable increase in energy efficiency. Now, system designers are taking things one step further by immersing servers directly in baths of non-conductive liquid, creating a passive heat-sink configuration that has the potential to support the cost and energy requirements of the data centers of the future at scale. 

In addition, data center operators across the globe are seizing the opportunity to put the heat potential of their equipment to practical use. Amazon, Apple, Facebook and other tech giants have instituted heat recycling programs that utilize the thermal energy generated by their data centers to heat homes and even entire city districts. These programs, though costly to institute, show real-world promise, especially in the colder climates favored for large-scale data infrastructure. 

New technologies continue to challenge data center designers to be more efficient and increase operators’ custodial responsibility when it comes to energy usage. While there are several approaches that can be taken, it is crucial that they are carefully executed in order to maximize efficiency while striving for reliability. In this tech-driven age, the demand for power — both electrical and data processing — will continue to be ever-increasing. Consequently, those designing and maintaining the centers of our digital future must judiciously craft an efficient network that can quickly adapt to changing demands while also keeping a steady hand on the collective power footprint of their respective infrastructure. For all of these reasons and more, the same Molex survey mentioned above found that 94% believe an appreciation for power is a critical requirement for design engineers.

As a trusted advisor to some of the biggest and most well-known names in data center environments, Molex is embracing and adapting to the changes across today’s industry landscape to ensure enterprises can achieve the most value tomorrow. Molex’s broad portfolio of connectivity solutions leverage the latest advances in copper and optics to deliver high signal integrity, lower latency, and reduced insertion loss for optimal efficiency, speed and density.