Enterprise client’s requirements are evolving due to AI booming and driving TPU, GPU demands. 

Enterprises race to adopt the technology and training AI models require an enormous amount of data centre builds and power.

As the demand for AI escalates, the design requirements require a rethink for capacity, space and power density and architecture for data centres to stay ahead with the rapid pace of change.

Builders, investors, and users will benefit from flexible data centre infrastructure strategies that can harness the AI revolution and harmonize with the grid.

This fireside chat session will look at:

• How and where do we build new data centers? 

• How do we design the Future of Data Centers to manage the change with cost and supply chain issues?

• How do we advance sustainability with innovation and AI technology? 

Artificial intelligence has taken the world by a storm, and data centers are at the heart of facilitating this revolution. While this technology isn’t new, the emergence of ChatGPT brought it into the mainstream with 100 million active users weekly in November 2023, using as much power as 33,000 households daily.

This session brings together some of the experts from the digital infrastructure space as they discuss the impact of AI on the industry, and what to expect in the coming years:

This panel will discuss:

• Powering for AI
• How will AI affect interactions between the digital infrastructure ecosystem?
• How do we expect the data center landscape to evolve as AI advances?

The demand for data centers is experiencing exponential growth, and so the race is on to build out huge data centers, acquire land, and secure power. Companies are pre-leasing capacity three years in advance, and power delivery timelines aren’t expected to slow over the next 12 months. This panel brings together experts in the field to discuss the biggest challenges and opportunities in the market.

This panel will explore:

• Where are data center operators looking for future site selection and where remains untapped?
• How are data center operators adapting to power challenges?
• What top three industry defining trends will define the next 12 months?

The growth of AI has necessitated data centers being more agile and innovative than ever before. This demands a re-evaluation of current design strategies and considering the right strategy for the size and scale of each data center. This panel will dive into the options at hand along with the drawbacks and opportunities.

This panel looks at:

• How must data centers adapt to rack requirements necessitated by AI?
• What is the impact of AI on land space?
• Energy implications from AI workloads
• When can modular centers be used to help enable AI workloads?
• How can we design flexibly?
• When should we retrofit/rebuild entirely?

With participants from Rowan Digital Infrastructure, a leading developer of hyperscale data center campuses, this fireside chat will explore the critical role of data centers in powering the AI revolution. It will delve into the challenges and opportunities presented by power constraints, the evolving landscape of data center location, and the imperative for sustainable and community-oriented development practices. The discussion will help illuminate the path forward for data center development and its impact on the global economy and society. 

Most cloud hyperscalers of the data center industry have each pledged to become Carbon Neutral (and Negative) by 2030. Though the Energy Transition continues to progress, clean energy is unlikely to fully cover the growth of cloud and AI loads within the next decade. At the same time, there are few practical alternatives currently at scale to reduce embodied carbon in steel and cement materials. Carbon removal offers a path to address hard-to-abate emissions towards upcoming net zero goals, while preparing the industry to address legacy and historic emissions by 2050.

Join Brian Marrs from Microsoft and Susanna Kass, Top 10 Sustainability Leaders for Data Center in the World, Data Center Advisor for UN SDG, SIP, Operating Partner for Digital Gravity Infra Partners to discuss:

• How and Why Microsoft becomes a pioneer for Carbon Dioxide Removal (CDR)?
• The Northstars to guide Carbon Removal Platforms for The Future of Data Centers Circular Economy Design and Impact 
• Call to Action- Commercial Approach to Scale beyond our Data Center industry. 

As we continue to build more data centers with innovation and technologies at a global level, new talent is essential to continue the scale to further digital growth.

The Datacloud Talent in Tech initiative is an educational opportunity for young people learn about working in the data center industry.

The expansion of the AI landscape has led to an incredibly high demand for compute power. Edge computing enables a reduced latency that is crucial for generative AI applications. The CEO of DigitalBridge cited that edge compute will be up and running by the end of the decade, so it’s integral to bring it to the forefront of design strategy.

This panel will consider:

• What does this new infrastructure look like?
• How will operators adapt current centers?
• When will this truly take off?

As organizations prepare for the rapid deployment of liquid cooling technologies, data center teams need to find and address the skills and training gaps related to these new installations. In this session, Uptime Institute brings together our training specialist and our North America Technical lead in a collaborative exchange to build new knowledge through an interactive working session.

Join our workshop to understand to learn more how to address the challenges for your facility.

As Cloud Service Providers and Hyperscalers race to develop next-generation data centers, the demand to accommodate the current and projected growth in Artificial Intelligence (AI) is at the forefront. Key to this development is the construction of large server/GPU clusters for generative or AI training applications, where fiber density plays a pivotal role. Optical transceivers will require an increased number of fiber connections, with fiber counts at server/GPU racks projected to exceed thousands of strands.

In this discussion, we will cover:

• How pre-connectorized solutions can fast-track market entry 
• How smaller fibers and connectors can address density challenges
• Future innovations in fiber technology that could exponentially increase fiber capacity and reduce latency.

With land availability in established markets decreasing, twinned with regulatory restriction as seen in Northern Virginia, developers are eyeing up the next hotspots. With demand only expected to grow in light of the ever-increasing demand for AI and high-compute technologies, opportunity is ripe for operators to make a foothold in new markets.

This panel considers:

• What are the greatest drivers behind moving to emerging markets?
• How can we overcome the growth challenge?
• What’s the power availability in the region?

Latin America is an emerging market with huge growth potential in the coming years, with companies such as AWS planning to invest more than $5 billion in Mexico over the next decade and continuous new cloud region announcements from Oracle, Microsoft, Google and Huawei. This panel considers the current and future data center infrastructure investment opportunities in the region and key challenges to overcome.

Here we discuss:

• Which LatAm countries will be hot spots for investment in the coming years?
• Free trade zones and other incentives available to attract investment
• What are the critical infrastructure investment opportunities and challenges to support regional data center growth?

Attracting and retaining data center staff has been a major challenge and continues to be problematic for operators. Nearly half of the current data center workforce boasts 20 years of experience exemplifying the difficulties in attracting new talent and truly future-proofing the workforce. Futher, the gender divide persists, and on average, a meager 8% of all teams are made up of women. This panel assesses the state of play of the data center workforce, and considers strategies to attract fresh, and diverse, talent into the industry.

This panel evaluates:

• How is the data center workforce evolving?
• What more can be done to attract fresh talent into the industry?
• Where can companies upskill and reskill in the industry?

With new developments increasing and vacancy rates declining, the data center market remains robust and resilient against broader macroeconomic challenges. The rapid growth of emerging technologies such as AI, streaming, and self-driving cars will continue to drive data center demand across the United States. In this session, industry behemoths will discuss the current trends and challenges in the M&A market, and the strategies for success in meeting increasing demand.

This panel will discuss:

• How do we expect the macroeconomic environment to evolve in the coming year?
• Who are the greatest investors in the data center space and what new entrants will we see?
• What creative financing solutions are we seeing to meet demand for capital?

Data centers have increased in value as an asset class spurred by technological advancements, particularly in the aftermath of the pandemic. This panel will discuss creative financing solutions for data centers and how risk can be prevented given the ever-increasing transaction size.

In this panel we discuss:

• What are the existing arrangements enabling operators to expand capacity?
• What are the creative financing options for data centers?
• How can risk be prevented given the increase in transaction size?

With a shortage in power availability and a mammoth increase in power demand, operators are eagerly looking at alternative power to alleviate pressure from the grid.

In this panel we will discuss:

• How are operators working to secure power in the current climate?
• What new technologies are operators turning towards to meet power demand?
• Storage solutions to ensure reliability
• Could SMRs be the silver bullet in meeting power demand? When will they enter the mainstream?

As the complexity and compute-intensity of AI applications surges, so does the heat produced by these high-performance systems which traditional air-cooling methods are insufficient to dissipate. This panel discusses the move to liquid cooling and how to leverage it efficiently and sustainably.

Here we discuss:

• How has the increase of power use changed cooling requirements?
• How will increased cooling requirements impact the design of data centers?
• What are the sustainability implications of moving from air to liquid cooling?
• How can waste be decreased when using water-intense cooling methods?

From aligning measurements to creating clean energy solutions and developing new power and cooling innovations, the digital infrastructure industry’s sustainability journey has many facets. Contributing authors to the Amazon best seller "Greener Data - Volume Two" will discuss these topics and more as they share thoughts, research, and insights on “Getting to Greener Data.”
 

The industry has made significant headways in its sustainability goals, but we’re still not carbon neutral. In a period of retrofitting and redesigning data centers to accommodate for new technologies, we should consider approaches to minimise environmental impact. Embodied carbon accounts for around 11% of global carbon emissions, leading to AWS pledging to reduce the embodied carbon of their infrastructure to reach net-zero by 2040. This panel considers this, among other methods, of ensuring sustainable construction and maintenance practices.

This panel explores:

• Ensuring the use of sustainable materials amidst an increase of retrofitting and rebuilding
• New approaches to design to improve environmental impact
• What steps must be taken to prepare for the Climate Corporate Data Accountability Act?
• Reusing heat and water waste to enhance sustainability

The data center industry continues to spend heavily on renewable energy, with contracts for 40GW currently out in the US alone, but intermittency problems remain a top challenge and existing battery storage remains inadequate. Given the increasing pressure to meet sustainability metrics and power shortages across the country, this panel discusses the strategies for successful use of clean energy and where technology can help.

This panel discusses:

• What technologies can help overcome intermittency problems with renewable energy?
• What are the most fruitful alternatives to diesel back up generators?
• What more can be done to encourage the shift to hydrogen?