In the early days of Google, it became evident that it was essentially a networking company with search as its main application. That has been its real advantage and edge over others. Microsoft, too, got the religion, albeit a little late.
Whether it’s Amazon, Google or Microsoft, data centers and network infrastructure have always been a key part of my thinking about the internet and its applications. I have been keeping a close eye on AI and the infrastructure it would need, and of course its climate implications.
I have a list of articles and data points that help me examine the changing world more quantitatively. Going forward, I will share these with you, the readers, along the way.
- Goldman Sachs Research estimates that data center power demand will grow 160% by 2030. In other words, we will see data centers’ share of global power consumption rise from 1% to 2% to 3% to 4% by 2030. Link
- This is going to come with some massive environmental headaches — starting with drinking water supply problems. A single data center can consume up to 5 million gallons of drinking water per day. In the Phoenix area alone, there are more than 58 data centers. Do the math, and you start to see the problem in areas where water supply is already at a premium. Link
- The U.S. has more data centers (5,381) than the rest of the major countries combined. Link
- In the U.S., 15 states contain 80% of the data centers in the country. Some states – such as Virginia, home to Data Center Alley – astonishingly have over 25% of their electricity consumed by data centers. At 2.9 watt-hours per ChatGPT request, AI queries require about 10 times the electricity of traditional Google queries. Link #1 Link #2
- At the Paris Olympics, heat from an Equinix data center helped warm the Aquatics Center, which hosted swimming, diving and water polo events. The data center’s heat output can warm 1,000 homes, a capability Equinix aims to expand. Link Link
- The AI-driven datacenter boom is pushing demand up and down the chain. We all know about the booming demand for chips that has turned Nvidia into a speculator’s darling. With the changing geopolitical situation, we have a chip-factory boom in the making. SEMI, a trade group, estimates more than 60 new fab projects will begin construction through 2030. Link
- AI is boosting the need for storage, which in turn is reflected in the growth in demand for enterprise solid-state drives. TrendForce is forecasting higher demand — especially for higher-capacity drives in the 16-terabyte range. AI servers will drive an average annual growth rate of over 60% in SSD demand. In 2024, TrendForce estimates that AI-related SSD procurement capacity will exceed 45 exabytes. Link
August 22, 2024. San Francisco
