Material Insights · Understanding the Material World

Data centres

Buildings full of servers that turn electricity into computation and then into heat.

Conversion and use · Industry, buildings and farms · No. 119

  • Conversion and use
Conversion and use · Industry, buildings and farms · Foundation · Energy

A data centre is, in energy terms, a giant electric heater that happens to do your computing on the way.

Chart: Illustration: Data centres

Where it comes from

Chart: Map of where it comes from

Every transistor switch charges tiny capacitances and dumps the energy as heat, so practically every watt a server draws ends up warming the room. Cooling then takes about 38-40% of facility electricity.

Three things to know
  1. Average PUE fell from 2.50 in 2007 to about 1.5, but has barely moved since 2018, so gains now come from chips.
  2. An H100 GPU uses about a hundred million times more energy per operation than physics' Landauer limit for erasing a bit.
  3. A 100 MW US data centre may use as much direct water as about 2,600 households.
The journey
  1. 1 Grid supplyHigh-voltage AC into the site substation
  2. 2 UPSConditions power, batteries bridge any outage
  3. 3 Power suppliesConvert AC to 12 or 48 V DC
  4. 4 Chips computeGPUs and CPUs turn every watt into heat
  5. 5 CoolingAir or liquid carries heat outdoors
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