In 2024, artificial intelligence (AI) will continue to drive the development of data center energy consumption and computing power, and bring new business models to the data center segment. Corning's michael crook has released his data center trends and industry predictions for 2024.
Whether it's everyday aps such as mobile banking and social media, or cutting-edge emerging technologies such as artificial intelligence (AI) and immersive gaming, the data center is the invisible engine that has been quietly driving the evolution of applications. With more applications moving to the cloud and the AI boom, the power consumption, cooling and security needs of data center operations are also changing.
Looking ahead to 2024, Corning believes data center operators should pay attention to the following three prominent trends:
In last year's forecast, compared to traditional data centers, AI and machine learning demand for power density, and three times higher than traditional data centers. The specific processing mode of the large language model (1Lm) requires a large number of fiber connections, but also puts higher requirements on the power supply and cooling of the device.
Ai will continue to be one of the driving forces of data center trends in 2024. We will continue to see widespread deployment of AI and machine learning (I) in data centers, especially in hyperscale data centers, which will require better management of energy consumption and resources. In addition, as companies continue to build large language models, they also need to build new inference networks that analyze new data sets to make predictions, which require greater throughput and lower latency.
Typically, hyperscale operators design and build the largest data center campuses. But as the energy and space requirements to support artificial intelligence, machine learning, and other emerging applications continue to increase, hyperscale data center operators may need to investigate alternative ways to build their facilities.
This opens up opportunities for multi-tenant data centers (mDc). These operators have both the development capabilities similar to real estate companies and the technical capabilities (they own the site), and they know how to meet power and cooling needs. Therefore, in areas where space and energy are limited, when hyperscale operators need to operate facilities, multi-tenant data centers are a good choice.
Enterprise users also want to take advantage of these emerging technologies, but building a data center facility is a significant capital investment. One example: multi-tenant data centers and other new "cloud" providers offer "AI cloud services" that lease dedicated server space to an organization, regardless of its size, to run AI computing tasks.
As enterprises will seek computing power closer to where applications are deployed, multi-tenant data centers will also play a role in the rise of edge computing. Advances in fiber optic transceivers help data center operators maximize space use
The adoption of new technologies requires data centers to generate exponentially more computing power and transfer more data faster. Given space and power supply constraints, operators know that simply adding more fiber interconnects to meet these demands is not a sustainable strategy.
Especially for hyperscale data centers, operators have begun to deploy 800G fiber transceivers to support applications, and it is possible to see some 1.6TB prototypes in 2024. High performance computing applications such as artificial intelligence and machine learning are driving 800G fiber deployments. The latest network switch for interconnecting AI servers in the data center with 800G interconnect. In many cases, the transceiver ports on these network switches operate in branch mode, in which 800G lines are divided into two 400c lines or more than 1000 lines. In this way, data center operators are able to increase the connectivity of switches and connect more servers. As we see fiber transceiver upgrades, where light wavelengths and fibers can carry more data, we will also see fiber transceivers with fewer connections and higher rates at work, benefiting data center customers by reducing cable congestion within the rack and improving air flow.
Advances in fiber optic technology have made it possible for fibers and wavelengths to carry more data. The typical multimode 400G SR8 fiber transceiver is equipped with 16 fiber connections and is suitable for short-range applications, but the 400G SR4 fiber transceiver (reducing the number of fibers to 8) is entering the market. These fiber optic transceivers, along with other new fiber optic transceivers, play a big role in helping data centers meet the growing demand for data.
Related to this trend are advances in connector miniaturization, and the development of solutions such as ultra-small connectors will help data center operators make greater use of limited space.
CI0 and c70 companies should be on top of these emerging trends to ensure their data centers can support emerging business processes and new applications. While it may be tempting to piece together individual component solutions just to keep up with rapidly evolving technology, an integrated engineering solution that meets your customers' current and future data needs will always be the smarter choice.
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