“ When it comes to data centre operations and field services, there is a knowledge problem, which means there is an adoption problem”
VIVEK SWAMINATHAN, DIRECTOR OF PRODUCTS AND SOLUTIONS, DIGITAL WORKPLACE SOLUTIONS,
UNISYS
From digital warehouses to AI factories The core of the issue is a change in function. The traditional data centre was a digital warehouse, built for the relatively static tasks of storing and retrieving information. The AI data centre is an active factory, built for the computationally intense process of producing intelligence. This involves training Large Language Models on vast datasets – a process that can run thousands of GPUs at maximum capacity for weeks or months at a time. It is a shift from handling many small, independent tasks to running one enormous, sustained workload.
This new operational paradigm is what drives the explosive growth in power density. A standard server rack historically drew 10-12 kilowatts( kW). The new AI racks, packed with
datacentremagazine. com 121