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Traditionally, infrastructure refers to the physical and economic systems that support society, such as power stations, railways, and roads. However, as we move towards a data-driven, digital era, the need for a new kind of infrastructure has emerged – the data centers. This is because data consumption, especially in India has grown exponentially, with a CAGR of 19.02 percent growth in mobile data consumption over the last five years, a trend we expect to see for years to come.
Large amounts of personal and critical data from citizens, businesses, and entities now traverse the digital domain, making data available to users anytime they want and necessitating data security. This is one of the reasons why nations including India want to build more local data centers, not only because proximity to data enables a significant reduction in the speed of data processing, but it also helps establish data sovereignty that protects the privacy, security, and interests of its citizens.
However, if we want to build more data centers located in India, we must not ignore the astounding amount of energy data centers consume. In fact, according to Anders Andrae and Tomas Edler’s study “On Global Electricity Usage of Communication Technology: Trends to 2030,” data centers are projected to consume 8 percent of electricity worldwide by 2030. Building sustainable data centers is not a nice-to-have, but imperative to our collective fight against climate change.
Data centers in India: Where does it stand today?
Data center growth in India is driven by the rise in remote work (catalyzed by the pandemic), digitalization, over-the-top media services, and over 600 million smartphone users in India consuming on average 26 GB per user per month. Moreover, the growth of India’s digital economy marked by a massive spurt in digital transactions like Unified Payments Interface (UPI), increased adoption of cloud, Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Internet of Things (IoT) technologies, combined with the move towards data protection and localization make data centers a critical infrastructure requirement.
Today, the U.S. has 2,701 data centers, whereas Germany and China have 487 and 443 respectively. However, in India, there are just 138 data centers which are mostly located in Mumbai, Chennai, Delhi, and Bengaluru. The land scarcity and expensive real estate in these cities call for better infrastructure, including fiber connectivity, lower capital expenditure (CAPEX) and operating costs through data centers in non-metropolitan areas.
The data center market in India is expected to grow from 800MW of installed capacity in 2022 to 1700MW by 2025. As we build our digital infrastructure, it is essential for current and upcoming data center facilities to adopt sustainable practices. Data centers in India have taken various steps to reduce their carbon footprint, from building their own solar or wind power plants to signing power purchase agreements with renewable energy providers, and even planting saplings to offset their emissions. Besides transitioning to green energy, data centers can mitigate their carbon footprint by adopting liquid immersion instead of air cooling, switching to ‘IPU’ to offload CPU cycles, and choosing the right CPUs to get more performance with less power.
Need of the hour: Balancing power and planet
Decarbonizing data centers starts with redefining the design principles that kick off any data center build – the most significant of which is the traditional use of air as a coolant. This is increasingly unsustainable from both an economic as well as an environmental perspective, and this is where liquid cooling steps in.
With immersion liquid cooling, all internal server components are submerged in a fluid. The components and fluid are sealed in a container, then the heat from the components is transferred to the coolant, a process that requires far less energy than other approaches.
Spreading out computing resources is another way to improve data center efficiency. Inside a data center, services such as virtual switching, security and storage can consume a high number of CPU cycles. This can cause data centers to overload and overheat. An infrastructure processing unit (IPU) can help distribute power consumption by circumventing the CPU. An IPU is designed to offload functions such as networking control, storage management and security, all of which were traditionally run on the CPU.
India’s economical and practical approach aligns well with the role of CPUs as the driving force behind the current AI revolution. CPUs excel in scaling performance while maintaining energy efficiency, a distinct advantage over power-hungry and costly GPUs. Of course, the choice of CPU itself is critical as a sustainable data center processor can achieve higher workload performance while using less energy.
Future of Sustainable Data Centers
Solutions for sustainable data centers are by no means limited to the above-mentioned areas. For instance, AI is increasingly applied in data centers as well, where it can go beyond merely automating tasks to raising operational efficiencies. This makes for better cooling using lower power, and in turn, cutting energy bills and carbon footprints.
Moreover, the rise of edge computing, with smaller data centers located close to the edge of a network, helps provide quicker content delivery to end devices with lower latency. This distributed IT architecture reduces the amount of data that needs to be transmitted which reduces the load on traditional data centers and overall energy consumption.
It is crystal clear that while even more data centers will be needed, sustainability is no longer a matter of choice. Technologies like liquid immersion cooling, data center IPUs, and sustainable processors will contribute significantly to increasing efficiency and reducing environmental impact. But every measure, no matter what the scale of its benefit is – from using renewable power to implementing AI solutions is critical. How can it be otherwise when climate action failure is listed as the most severe risk on a global scale over the next 10 years?
By Santhosh Viswanathan, Managing Director & Vice President, Sales, Marketing & Communications Group, Intel India
Large amounts of personal and critical data from citizens, businesses, and entities now traverse the digital domain, making data available to users anytime they want and necessitating data security. This is one of the reasons why nations including India want to build more local data centers, not only because proximity to data enables a significant reduction in the speed of data processing, but it also helps establish data sovereignty that protects the privacy, security, and interests of its citizens.
However, if we want to build more data centers located in India, we must not ignore the astounding amount of energy data centers consume. In fact, according to Anders Andrae and Tomas Edler’s study “On Global Electricity Usage of Communication Technology: Trends to 2030,” data centers are projected to consume 8 percent of electricity worldwide by 2030. Building sustainable data centers is not a nice-to-have, but imperative to our collective fight against climate change.
Data centers in India: Where does it stand today?
Data center growth in India is driven by the rise in remote work (catalyzed by the pandemic), digitalization, over-the-top media services, and over 600 million smartphone users in India consuming on average 26 GB per user per month. Moreover, the growth of India’s digital economy marked by a massive spurt in digital transactions like Unified Payments Interface (UPI), increased adoption of cloud, Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Internet of Things (IoT) technologies, combined with the move towards data protection and localization make data centers a critical infrastructure requirement.
Today, the U.S. has 2,701 data centers, whereas Germany and China have 487 and 443 respectively. However, in India, there are just 138 data centers which are mostly located in Mumbai, Chennai, Delhi, and Bengaluru. The land scarcity and expensive real estate in these cities call for better infrastructure, including fiber connectivity, lower capital expenditure (CAPEX) and operating costs through data centers in non-metropolitan areas.
The data center market in India is expected to grow from 800MW of installed capacity in 2022 to 1700MW by 2025. As we build our digital infrastructure, it is essential for current and upcoming data center facilities to adopt sustainable practices. Data centers in India have taken various steps to reduce their carbon footprint, from building their own solar or wind power plants to signing power purchase agreements with renewable energy providers, and even planting saplings to offset their emissions. Besides transitioning to green energy, data centers can mitigate their carbon footprint by adopting liquid immersion instead of air cooling, switching to ‘IPU’ to offload CPU cycles, and choosing the right CPUs to get more performance with less power.
Need of the hour: Balancing power and planet
Decarbonizing data centers starts with redefining the design principles that kick off any data center build – the most significant of which is the traditional use of air as a coolant. This is increasingly unsustainable from both an economic as well as an environmental perspective, and this is where liquid cooling steps in.
With immersion liquid cooling, all internal server components are submerged in a fluid. The components and fluid are sealed in a container, then the heat from the components is transferred to the coolant, a process that requires far less energy than other approaches.
Spreading out computing resources is another way to improve data center efficiency. Inside a data center, services such as virtual switching, security and storage can consume a high number of CPU cycles. This can cause data centers to overload and overheat. An infrastructure processing unit (IPU) can help distribute power consumption by circumventing the CPU. An IPU is designed to offload functions such as networking control, storage management and security, all of which were traditionally run on the CPU.
India’s economical and practical approach aligns well with the role of CPUs as the driving force behind the current AI revolution. CPUs excel in scaling performance while maintaining energy efficiency, a distinct advantage over power-hungry and costly GPUs. Of course, the choice of CPU itself is critical as a sustainable data center processor can achieve higher workload performance while using less energy.
Future of Sustainable Data Centers
Solutions for sustainable data centers are by no means limited to the above-mentioned areas. For instance, AI is increasingly applied in data centers as well, where it can go beyond merely automating tasks to raising operational efficiencies. This makes for better cooling using lower power, and in turn, cutting energy bills and carbon footprints.
Moreover, the rise of edge computing, with smaller data centers located close to the edge of a network, helps provide quicker content delivery to end devices with lower latency. This distributed IT architecture reduces the amount of data that needs to be transmitted which reduces the load on traditional data centers and overall energy consumption.
It is crystal clear that while even more data centers will be needed, sustainability is no longer a matter of choice. Technologies like liquid immersion cooling, data center IPUs, and sustainable processors will contribute significantly to increasing efficiency and reducing environmental impact. But every measure, no matter what the scale of its benefit is – from using renewable power to implementing AI solutions is critical. How can it be otherwise when climate action failure is listed as the most severe risk on a global scale over the next 10 years?
By Santhosh Viswanathan, Managing Director & Vice President, Sales, Marketing & Communications Group, Intel India
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