A more sustainable data center

With the rise of generative artificial intelligence (AI), data centers have become an increasingly important part of the world's technological infrastructure, and their electricity consumption is also growing.

According to the International Energy Agency (IEA), data centers accounted for approximately 1.3% of global electricity demand in 2022. Almost everyone agrees that this figure is expected to continue to grow rapidly as the amount of data and computing processed in the cloud continues to increase. This is a global challenge, with overall global electricity growth projected to exceed 3% per year on average until 2026. Factors such as increasing consumer demand, the expansion of electric vehicle usage, increased heating and cooling needs due to global climate change, smart cities, and the electrification of industrial enterprises are all contributing to the increasingly fierce competition for electricity. This means that data centers need to improve their efficiency in order to fully realize their potential.

The good news is that engineers are already innovating to enhance the sustainability of data centers. The ever-growing volume of data and the accelerated speed of information movement mean that even seemingly small improvements in the cables, connectors, and cooling equipment used within today's data centers can have a significant impact on the amount of energy consumed by these facilities, especially when you consider that this impact multiplies across millions or even billions of interconnected devices in modern data centers.

Make full use of electricity

When electric energy flows from one place to another, all power transmission must overcome resistance losses. The longer the power transmission route, the greater the resistance to overcome - and the less usable power will reach its final destination.

Furthermore, "wasted" electricity generates heat, necessitating additional energy to cool the data center to ensure it operates within design specifications. Multiply the power consumption of one meter of cable by the number of meters of cables in a million-square-meter data center, and you inevitably end up with a very large number. Reducing these resistive losses ensures that more of the electricity purchased by the data center ultimately powers their equipment. Less wasted electricity means less total consumption.

Data centers have successfully reduced resistive losses by transmitting power at higher voltages, reducing the current required per unit of power and thus lowering the resistance generated during movement. Most companies in the industry have transitioned to 48-volt power distribution systems, and data centers may seek to use higher-voltage distribution systems in the future to further reduce resistive losses. Cables with higher range capabilities that can accommodate greater currents can also reduce such losses.

Every connection between cables and equipment indicates the potential for resistance loss. Low-resistance busbars and connectors can help reduce these losses. Even though these reductions may seem small on the scale of a single connector, the overall impact can quickly amplify due to the large number of connections required in a large data center.

Move data more efficiently

The ability to transmit data faster is crucial for AI, data centers, and the activities they support. However, the faster data is transmitted in large volumes, the more challenging it becomes for connections at both ends of the cable to handle this capacity. Passive connections do not use any additional power to transmit data from the cable to the device, but they have a limited distance over which they can move data at any given speed, while minimizing signal loss and attenuation. Active connections can move more data farther and faster, but at the cost of significant power consumption.

At TE Connectivity, we are striving to enhance cables and connectors to maximize the capabilities of passive interconnection. The longer the cables, the better they can serve cloud and AI device clusters, especially before active interconnection is required to maintain signal integrity. Solutions that utilize external cables or a combination of external and internal cables instead of circuit boards can further reduce power consumption and data latency. The right combination of these factors may enable data centers to use more passive cabling while maintaining higher speeds, thereby reducing their energy consumption.

Connectors also play a crucial strategic role in supporting future sustainable development efforts. The ability to conduct modular design around standard connectors will enable data centers to upgrade their equipment more easily, as innovation can lead to faster and higher bandwidth data transmission. In contrast, upgrading old equipment to enhance its functionality or efficiency using hardwired, connector-free solutions becomes more challenging. The lack of a simple upgrade path leads to more waste and reduces the flexibility of data centers to utilize more efficient electronic devices or configurations when they become available. Connectors are a key element in supporting a more circular ecosystem in large data centers.