- Three out of four decision makers know that AI is responsible for added data center press
- Renewable energy is key but water cooling is rejected by one in four
- Leaders see digital twins as ‘game switch’ for innovation
New research from Candence has revealed that the world’s current data centers are pushed to their absolute boundaries as companies expand investments in artificial intelligence and other cloud services.
Three-quarters (74%) of decision makers state that AI requirements put increased pressure on data centers, with 86% warning that a lack of innovation could have serious to moderate consequences.
In the midst of the ongoing battle for data centers improvements, companies are also pushing to make them more sustainable, but there is still a lot of work to be done.
We need to focus on improvements of data centers
Nine out of 10 (88%) is now actively working to improve energy efficiency across their data center operations, but fewer than one in three (31%) feel they are actually doing enough. In addition, almost three -quarters (70%) feels that the national power network can be on its border, which highlights the role that several local renewable energy sources can play on these campuses.
On the subject of sustainability one went out of four (26%) so far as to say that they would never use fluid cooling, which requires large amounts of water and can often have negative effects on the nearby communities.
However, there are plenty of challenges that prevent meaningful development, with managers who are concerned about the cost of implementing new technologies (42%), a lack of skilled staff (35%), incompatibility with older systems (31%), uncertainty about future technologies (30%) and an unclear investment return (33%).
Although artificial intelligence is often seen in natural language assistants (56%), causing the high demand for powerful data centers, Cadence says it can also help tackle the mounting problem. Its uses in automation of capacity management (50%), demand forecasts (54%) and error detection (60%) could play a significant role in the development of data centers.
Looking ahead, three out of four (73%) see digital twins such as ‘Game Change’ for Data Center Innovation, with four out of five (81%) already recognizing their value and one in four (21%) non-users who are preparing to adopt digital twins in the next 12 months.
