The demand for data and memory storage is increasing exponentially in line with the ever-growing digital world, including cloud computing, AI, streaming, 5G, and social media, to name just a few contributors. IDTechEx's extensive research on the sustainable developments and thermal management of data centers can be found in the Semiconductors, Computing & AI Research Reports and Subscriptions portfolio.
A growing demand for storage
The demand for scalable and efficient storage is at an all-time high, with the strain on data centers becoming increasingly apparent. Both high-capacity and cost efficiency will be two main drivers for revolutionizing the landscape of data centers going forward, to effectively and sustainably meet consumer and business demands. Achieving these goals and creating a smaller physical footprint to better manage the systems within data centers, could come down to a solution like tiered storage solutions, to optimize resources, costs, and performance. IDTechEx's report, "Emerging Memory and Storage Technology 2025-2035: Markets, Trends, Forecasts", explores some of the main aspects of computing, including cloud services and enterprise infrastructure, that are adding to the fast expansion of data centers.
Sustainability and innovative power generation
Sustainability surrounding data centers is increasingly prevalent, as hyperscalers continue to level up developments and require storage on a gigantic scale. However, it is these hyperscalers, including Microsoft, Meta, Google, and Amazon, that have been the main supporters in employing renewable energy projects and carbon dioxide removal technologies to increase data center sustainability. IDTechEx's report, "Sustainability for Data Centers 2025-2035: Green Technologies, Market Forecasts, and Players", covers the approaches and technologies that could potentially reshape the data center landscape to decrease the potentially harsh impacts on the environment.
Solar, wind, geothermal, nuclear, fuel cell, and battery and energy storage, are some examples of the main technologies covered by IDTechEx's research, that could contribute to decarbonizing power generation. Carbon dioxide removal technologies, explored in the "Carbon Dioxide Removal (CDR) 2025-2035: Technologies, Players, Carbon Credit Markets, and Forecasts" report, could help with stubborn supply chain emissions. Carbon credits could be offered to companies involved in the manufacturing and usage of data centers, to incentivize cleaner approaches to their installation, such as turning to green concrete as a material source.
Finding new ways to generate electricity, such as with the aforementioned renewable methods, is also likely to see interest, as the availability of electricity diminishes and the grid struggles to keep up. Tariffs, purchasing power agreements, or microgrids, may also provide a means of helping out with an increased demand for electricity, while the costs of wind and solar power projects have reportedly been lower than those associated with fossil fuels, highlighting an opportunity for their uptake.
Data center cooling technologies
Cooling technologies for data centers will be necessary in line with the amplification of their demand and subsequent usage. These include both server and rack level cooling that happens on the microlevel, such as chips, memories and racks, as well as room and facility cooling, including chillers, CARC and CRAH units, and cooling towers.
Air cooling can be described as a traditional method for server level cooling, where fans are installed onto a server board to cool heat sources. However, with increased thermal design power (TDP) of GPUs and CPUs, this may not be enough to regulate temperatures. Liquid cooling, on the other hand, could be better suited for these applications. The direct-to-chip approach sees a cold plate installed on top of a heat source, and can be done as single-phase or two-phase cooling, using water-glycol mixture or refrigerants respectively. Another alternative is immersion cooling, where a whole server board is immersed in fluid, providing a more direct cooling approach.
Computer room air handlers (CRAHs) for entire computer rooms serve as the heat exchanger, where cold water delivered from pump rooms can cool down the entire perimeter of the room. IDTechEx reports that liquid-cooled server racks are also beginning to replace air-cooled server racks in data centers, with liquid cooling being used on the server level and air-cooling taking place at a facility level due to the limited infrastructure availability. However, moving forward, IDTechEx foresees the wide adoption of liquid-to-liquid cooling. The report, "Thermal Management for Data Centers 2025-2035: Technologies, Markets, and Opportunities" covers IDTechEx's extensive research within this sector.
For more information on up-and-coming data center technologies and sustainability developments, visit IDTechEx's portfolio of Semiconductors, Computing & AI Research Reports and Subscriptions.
