The Ides is the day on the Roman calendar to indicate roughly the midpoint of the month it is usually the 15th, the Ides of March became famous as the date of Julius Caesar was assinated in 44BC. According to Plutarch, a seer had warned that harm would come to Caesar on the Ides of March. Enroute to the Senate, Caesar has passed the seer and joked “well, the Ides of March are come”, implying that the prohecy had not been fulfilled, to which the seer relied, “Aye, they are come, but they are not yet gone”
“Julius Caesar was assassinated by a group of senators on the Ides of March (15 March) of 44 BC during a meeting of the Senate at the Curia of Pompey of the Theatre of Pompey in Rome where the senators stabbed Caesar 23 times. They claimed to be acting over fears that Caesar's unprecedented concentration of power during his dictatorship was undermining the Roman Republic. At least 60 to 70 senators were party to the conspiracy, led by Marcus Junius Brutus, Gaius Cassius Longinus, and Decimus Junius Brutus Albinus.”
Source: Wikepedia, accessed 7th May 2024 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Assassination_of_Julius_Caesar
You may wonder where I am going with this, but AI and its impact on the data centre sector appears to me to be “an unprecendented concentration of power” it, AI, is taking over all rational thought and perhaps we should all take a deep breath, and consider what we are doing...
The dominant topic at the recent data centres events that I’ve attended is AI.
It is top of a list compiled by Simmons and Simmons https://www.simmons-simmons.com/en/publications/cluuzeox800hyuatcw3kkq0xs/top-10-issues-in-data-centres published on the 11th April 2024, the “The Impact of AI on Data Centres” and has links to number 3 on the list “Balancing Net Zero with human need” and 4 Critical Infrastructures for powering data centres, as well as 8 “Supply chain challenges” and 9 “Lack of Skilled labour in the industry”.
But, are we sure about AI?
Personally, I’m not convinced that AI will turn out to be the pancea that some are saying, yes, its good for healthcare and for analysis of geo-data which can be used to determine where and what we should consider for adaptation and mitigation of climate change, I’ll even go so far as to say that it can eliminate errors and optimise production lines, but you could do that with sigma six and kaizen methods. The darker side of AI is fake news, outright disinformation and deep fakes, and I am not convinced that enough is being done from a legislative or self-regulatory point of view to address these issues.
From a data centre perspective, it appears to be “technology for technology’s sake”, AI chips use more power and thus require more cooling, a recent conversation revealed that one of the major players in the space have advised a power/cooling global manufacturer to prepare for 500kW racks.
Its clear that legacy data centres will not and cannot provide the infrastructure to support this path, meaning that AI will have to be located in “state of the art” data centres, which will take at least 3 years to build, even if we had a 21st century design ready to go, which we dont, so perhaps longer.
Add to that the lack of power in the traditional data centre hubs and the question really is, where are we going to put them, and thats to assume that we’ll be able to obtain the vast amounts of power required. One area could be the Nordics, to take advantage of renewable energy and a suitable climate, but if we were to deploy at scale, what could happen to the micro-climate, could we be accelerating global warming by locating heat producing data centres in the very areas that are at risk from climate change?
Nukes?
Some AI’ers have even cited the use of Nuclear power to address the power problems, primarily the use of Small Modular Reactors (SMR’s) located within the data centre itself! It might happen in the US, but I doubt very much it will happen in the EU/UK for a host of reasons, the first is cost, access to fuels, cost, security, additional infrastructure adding to the cost, NIMBYism, Nuclear Free cities policies, cost, and timescales, the decision for SMRs in the UK will not be taken until 2029 and realistically the first working reactor some time after, an example is Hinkley Point C, projections indicate double the original cost and over 4 years later to start generating. See our previous post on SMRs here
Issues
Over the weekend, (5th May 2024) there was a press report covering the disgruntlement of locals adjacent to a large hyperscale build in Waltham Forest on the outskirts of London, true, this was more to do with the construction of the data centre rather than the operation, but we are already seeing local communities moaning about new builds in Ireland, Netherlands, US, with moratoriums in place in Dublin, Amsterdam, Singapore and others.
We’re already under fire for building featureless boxes, that create low level noise pollution, consume vast quantities of energy, land and water, dont provide many jobs and now we want to add the use of nuclear energy to the list and build a lot more of them around the world.
It clear to see that we will have resistance to building in the future.
Regulations
Returning the Simmons & Simmons list, the 2nd topic was “Regulatory compliance in the drive to Net Zero”, alarmed by the explosive forecasted growth as far back as 2008 (well before AI was even a thing) in data centres, the EU created the EU Code of Conduct for Data Centres (Energy Efficiency) to try and optimise existing facilities, reduce energy consumption and generally pave the way for a more energy efficient and sustainable data centre sector. This was always envisaged as pre-cursor to more formal regulation, to prepare the industry for what was coming down the road, and that regulation landed in March with the publication of the Energy Efficiency Directive and a delegated act targetting data centres, the 2024 C 1639 which you can download from this link http://data.europa.eu/eli/reg_del/2024/1364/oj. In essence, data centres will have to report a shed load of operational data including PUE, REF, ERF and WUE for the 2023 reporting year by the 15th September 2024, and data for the 2024 reporting year by the 15th May 2025.
From recent events and conversations, it appears that the existing data centre sector will struggle to even collect the raw data they will need to use to calculate, let alone report this data to the EU
Radical Rethink
What of the cost of AI? This is the cost of the build-out in terms of data centres, grid infrastucture, hardware, software etc, I tried to find out, but the range was too vast for sensible contemplation, it will be in the trillions when everything is accounted for, if we continue to use a 20th century design and build strategy.
We have an opportunity to use just a portion of the obscene amount mooted for AI to really conduct some serious research and development for a “radical redesign” for the real data centre of the future, one that meets the true definition of “sustainability” to satisfy the needs of today without compromising the needs of future generations. Research for instance, into Graphene, a substance that could reduce energy consumption from chips, and emit less heat, thus reducing cooling requirements, surely this is a better use of resources and cash?
So, beware the AI’ds of March...