I couldn't pass this up to break from data centers for a second. One day last week, I read in the morning from the American Energy Society, "California Governor Gavin Newsom is trying to get control of wild gasoline spikes." In the afternoon, I read a headline from Hart Energy, "California Sues Exxon Over GlobalPlastic Pollution." It's like beating a dog to motivate him to roll over. Aircraft Carriers and Data Centers I had the good fortune to tour a data center under construction a few weeks ago in Northern Virginia. It was a three-story, one-million-square-foot facility. The only way…
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In our first data center post two weeks ago, we covered the core of data centers, including racks, servers, and the exploding computer capacity and heat generation of evermore powerful computing chips. In last week’s second post, we covered the types of data centers, from distributed edge data centers to enormous hyperscale data centers. In this week’s third data center post, we dive into the broad metrics and opportunities to improve the energy efficiency of data centers. Power Usage Effectiveness First, I’ll introduce or reintroduce the power usage effectiveness of data centers, or PUE, as follows. In general, levels of…
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