Top insights for IT pros
From cybersecurity and big data to cloud computing, IT Brew covers the latest trends shaping business tech in our 4x weekly newsletter, virtual events with industry experts, and digital guides.
Amazon Web Services (AWS) says it has given its data centers a glow up to keep up with AI innovation.
During the cloud service subsidiary’s annual learning conference, re:Invent, it revealed that several changes had been made to the components in its data center facilities in a bid to support the “next generation” of AI.
What’s new? One of the newly announced changes includes “simplified electrical distribution and mechanical systems” within the company’s facilities that would reduce the number of racks that can be impacted by electrical issues by 89%. The company said some of the ways it has taken such measures include “bringing backup power closer to the rack and reducing the number of fans that are used to exhaust hot air.”
The cloud subsidiary added that it is tapping new mechanical cooling solutions for its new and existing data centers and that it will be able to reduce the amount of available energy that is unused or underused, typically known as stranded power, in order to make better use of its available energy.
Other changes that have been rolled out by the cloud giant include:
- A “more efficient” cooling system that is estimated will reduce mechanical energy consumption by up to 46% compared to prior designs during peak cooling conditions
- The use of lower carbon steel and concrete, which will help AWS to reduce its embodied carbon
- Backup generators that can run on renewable diesel, a move that can reduce greenhouse gas emissions as much as 90% over the course of the fuel’s life cycle compared to traditional fossil diesel
With the newly announced changes, AWS said each of its data center sites will be able to produce 12% more compute power for customer workloads. The company anticipates that construction of new data centers with the updated components will begin in early 2025.
“These data center capabilities represent an important step forward with increased energy efficiency and flexible support for emerging workloads,” Prasad Kalyanaraman, AWS’s vice president of infrastructure services, said in a statement. “But what is even more exciting is that they are designed to be modular, so that we are able to retrofit our existing infrastructure for liquid cooling and energy efficiency to power generative AI applications and lower our carbon footprint.”
The times they are a-changin’. Announcements of data centers across the nation sporting new looks and avant-garde features aren’t out of the ordinary these days. In November, Microsoft announced that it was experimenting with the use of wood in two new data center facilities in an attempt to cut down its carbon emissions. IT Brew also previously reported that other players are trying out alternative locations, such as outer space, for their facilities.