Cadence Design Systems reacts to Gartner power forecast

Author: Simon Rowley

As DCNN reported earlier today, Gartner is predicting that power shortages will restrict 40% of all AI data centres – which serves as a stark reminder that data centre energy consumption is rapidly rising.

Responding to this news, Mark Fenton, Product Engineering Director at Cadence Design Systems, comments: “The demand for power-hungry technologies like AI, blockchain, and quantum computing is hiking up data centre pressures. However, building more facilities to meet this demand poses a range of challenges – from competition over resources, such as water, to the practicalities of connecting them to aging and stretched electrical grids. Rather than trying to build their way out of the issue, facility leaders must ask themselves whether they are getting the most out of their current infrastructure. In most cases, the answer is no.

“Take electrical consumption as an example. A large data centre can use upwards of 50 megawatts (mW) of power, equivalent to over 5,000 homes. AI will push these figures up further. A rack of traditional servers can run on less than 10kW, whereas AI requires rack densities of up to 100kW per rack. At the same time, data centre power usage effectiveness (PUE) scores have stagnated in recent years at around PUE1.5, whilst best-in-class data centres consistently attain scores of PUE1.1. This means that many data centres globally use 50% more overhead energy than necessary – a clear waste of their existing resources and not something building a new data centre can fix.

“Innovative solutions, like digital twins, can help managers navigate these challenges and reduce power consumption significantly. For example, they enable the identification of stranded capacity and ineffective cooling before they can create an issue, in addition to preventing over-provisioning, where more resources are allocated than necessary. Implementing such technology can optimise operational efficiency, helping data centres use energy more judiciously. Ultimately, before turning to the financially and environmentally costly option of building more data centres, operators must get their house in order, ensuring they best use their existing resources.”

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