Executive Roundtable: Achieving Balance in AI Data Center Designs

Danielle Rossi, Trane:  Future-proof, or near future-proof, planning is key to decreasing the future cost and downtime of day two changes to a site. 

Ensuring site design can accommodate future liquid cooling upgrades, higher electrical inputs, and possible load density expansion is the best way to guarantee future versatility. 

Additionally, it is important to adapt to changing requirements over time. 

If a site is pre-planned properly to support future changes and growth, the site operator will be able to pivot designs as needed for an application close to real-time. 

We will see more hybrid cooling designs, particularly in future retrofits, and site operators should be able to adjust to those needs without any substantial site redesign or construction. 

Sean Farney, JLL:  Take the time and energy to learn the technology, because the IT equipment for running AI applications is different than legacy IT assets. 

Then, talk with business leaders to understand the current and future needs. 

As you move into design, plan for optimal scalability and flexibility, knowing that requirements may change as the project progresses. 

Our project management team has seen requests to scale in both directions. 

Also, be sure to consider how the facility design can support optimal operational efficiency. 

If you engage your facility management team early in the design phase, they can provide valuable tips that lead to more efficient and resilient operations down the line.

Harry Handlin, ABB:  With exponential growth of data generation and storage, data centers are scaling up rapidly and construction trends are emerging. 

Higher power densities are required to support AI data centers.

Being able to adapt is key.  

We expect both electrical and HVAC designs to change. 

It's all due to the expanded scale of the data center and the significant increases in rack densities.

Josh Claman, Accelsius:  First, when planning a project, you need to look ahead and guarantee you’ve got investment protection. 

From a cooling perspective, one way to achieve this is by putting in facility infrastructure that can support multiple types of cooling technology, such as a facility water loop that can support single-phase direct-to-chip, two-phase direct-to-chip, and immersion. 

Then, when choosing your cooling technologies, it’s smart to choose solutions that run at the highest possible FW temperature to drive sustainability and efficiency–that way, you won’t have to keep your chillers ramped up around the clock.

Overall, flexibility is key. 

Of course, while we’re convinced that two-phase direct-to-chip cooling is the future of liquid cooling, it’s imperative to keep your options open to whatever the future may bring.

Next:  Innovation Paths for Energy-Efficient Data Centers