The number of data centers in the US, over a decade and a half period from 2010 to the end of 2024 four times, The trend is similar around the world: More data centers, bigger, now or soon. number of construction projects According to data center certification and research agency Uptime Institute, a total of 377 centers have been announced in the last four years, exceeding 100 MW.
But before we allow Big Tech’s race to overcalculate, which environmentalists wouldn’t want us to allow, let’s stop and consider another option: making do with what we have. Can we retrofit our current data centers to match the requirements of our latest technology? Perhaps the building frenzy is not justified; Maybe we have all the amenities we need. A few upgrades here, some new servers there, a fresh coat of paint, and voila – an AI data center built from the shell of a legacy.
“Most of the time this means bulldozing the building and starting over.”
I took this idea to data center experts, who told me, in so many words, that no, our current data centers cannot be easily retrofitted to become AI superhouses. The problem is as physical as the ground you’re standing on: Older data centers can’t support the latest AI technology. The racks that hold computer chips or AI chips are too heavy for the floor, and they will break under the weight.
Chris Brown, chief technology officer of the Uptime Institute, summarized the situation: “We can retrofit the old one to a degree, but not to the extent that many of these AI factories need.” For example, small volumes of small data centers can accommodate small AI-focused workloads for a Fortune 500 company. “But most of the time it means bulldozing the building and starting over,” Brown said.
AI racks, metal cabinets containing stacks of metal boxes called servers, which contain the chips that perform computer or generic AI processing, have a weight problem. Thirty years ago, at the beginning of Brown’s career in the data center, the average rack weight was about 400 to 600 pounds. Think about the weight of a household refrigerator to a baby grand piano. Now, it’s common for racks to weigh anywhere from 1,250 pounds to 2,500 pounds, ranging from a Grizzly Bear to a Toyota Prius. But racks containing AI devices come at the upper end of the spectrum and beyond — Brown said an estimated milestone weight for an AI rack is 5,000 pounds.
The extra weight is due to the amount of electronics packed into the metal racks, Brown said. Lag between GPUs slows down data transmission, which slows down AI model training, wasting precious compute power and ultimately money. The latest high-density racks come loaded with hundreds of memory chips (due to the declining global supply of RAM) and up to 1,000 GPUs. Whereas traditional computer chip workloads averaged about 10 kilowatts per rack a decade ago, AI workloads are now 35 times that, up to 350 kilowatts per rack. “They’re packing as much stuff as possible into each rack and putting the racks as close to each other as possible to maximize that capacity,” he said.
More power produces more heat that needs to be dissipated before a fire or chips melt. The air flowing over the chips has been replaced or supplemented by cooling plates filled with liquid, often a watery mixture of toxic coolants. Water weighs a little more than 8 pounds per gallon. And don’t forget about cables. There are often 10 to 35 racks lined up to form a row inside a data center. To deliver enough power, the diameter of the cables, or the cable-like copper plates called busways, needs to be increased. (Imagine extinguishing a house fire with a kitchen sink faucet; spraying water from a wide-diameter fire hose is better.) Brown said a modern busway weighs 37 pounds per linear foot.
“It’s all those things — it’s the weight of all the processors, all the memory, all the chips that you need to be able to run the IT devices, all the cooling hardware that you need in there,” he said. The structure of legacy data centers is not up to the task, Brown said. Many have built high-rise floors, which cost around £1,250 per square foot steady Loaded, he noted. Dynamic loads, such as racks pushed across the floor, require more load bearing, he said.
Even if you reinforce the floor of an older center, other geometric problems remain, said Chris McLean, president of data center construction firm Critical Facility Group. The VergeHe has been designing data centers for nearly two decades and during that time rack height has increased by 3 feet, from 6 feet to 9 feet, (The footprint has increased from just 2 by 2 feet to 2 by 3 feet,) The new height exceeds the industrial door frames of a few years ago, Cargo elevators, too, can’t withstand the weight of the giant racks, the equipment they rest on while moving, and the weight of the humans pushing that thing: “All of a sudden, you’re climbing into a pretty sturdy elevator for a multi-story,” McLean said,
“The reason for the huge growth in the last two years is just the fact that artificial intelligence is swallowing up everything.”
Big tech companies are apparently building new data centers to accommodate their growing push for AI dominance. And when OpenAI, Microsoft, or others run out of space in their own AI-built data center campuses, they rent space in colocation facilities owned by companies like CoreWeave or Digital Realty or Compass, which are, in turn, building new AI-focused data centers. “The reason for the huge growth over the last two years is just the fact that artificial intelligence is consuming everything,” Brown said at Uptime.
Despite the hype, generative AI is not the only type of computation, lest we forget that specific computer workloads still exist. In fact, non-AI data workloads are actually growing, Brown said. Therefore, traditional data centers are as important as ever. Universities, hospitals, medium-sized companies and municipalities will have to continue storing their non-AI data files, like your blurry photos that still exist on some cloud provider’s servers, McLean said. “All those people still need that legacy data center environment,” he said. “This is never going to end.”
