Ever-increasing internet traffic and the video streaming boom will encourage large data center investments in the coming years. Last year, around US$143B was invested worldwide for new data center projects. Large internet companies like Amazon, Facebook, and Google are leading the investment in next-generation “green” data centers. There is a trend towards building larger data centers, consolidating and densifying server concentration for the sites which require more efficient buildings. Yole released a report, New Technologies & Architectures for Efficient Data Centers that provides an analysis of the trends, market and opportunities of development for the next generation of data centers, including new architectures and technologies. It provides information on data center global energy consumption from 2010 to 2020; the impact of data center challenges on power electronics equipment, uPs, and cooling systems; description of new data center technologies, for example, photonic, emerging non-volatile memory, and wide band gap materials; Market metrics by technology, including regional split; Supply chain overview, including players’ market share by market
Consequently, the blade server market for data centers will display a CAGR of +10.8% from 2015 – 2020 while the entire server market will increase by 2.3%. Global server market share for data centers will increase from slightly lower than 20% in 2014 to almost 35% by 2020. Examples from Google, Microsoft, and Facebook show that it is possible to build highly-efficient data centers, with PUEs close to 1.1. In order to address the urgency for reduced energy consumption, manufacturers are emphasizing improved efficiency of the architectural design, the equipment, and the cooling system. Modularity brings a fresh approach to data center design, enabling the incorporation of additional servers when needed. Also, the power and cooling systems are better optimized, since equipment modules and distribution sub-networks can be activated/deactivated for improved efficiency. Moreover, virtualization and server resource management systems eliminate unnecessary power waste.
Yole has also identified a smaller, high-potential parallel market consisting of “container data centers”. These containers are rugged, portable, energy-efficient plug & play solutions that have enjoyed rising sales over the last few years. HP leads this new market, which will enjoy a 23.2% CAGR from 2015 – 2020, with Huawei following closely behind.
Other solutions exist to minimize distribution chain power loss, such as dc-grid data centers. Thanks to a simplified architecture and fewer conversion steps, losses can be reduced by 20%. Players like ABB, NTT, and Huawei have several dc-grid data center demonstrators that use a 380 Vdc distribution voltage. The main barrier for this new architecture is the lack of appropriate dc components, especially 400 Vdc safety breakers. This report contains a detailed analysis of who is doing what, and how dc architecture helps reduce energy consumption.
In future data centers, photonics is generally perceived as a technical solution that will handle the increasing bandwidth up to 100 Gb/s and beyond. But one of photonics’ intrinsic advantages is power-saving, which is a huge plus for interconnects that account for a significant part of power consumption. For example, with a 10-Gb/s link, a copper interconnect will consume 10 W, while silicon photonics or VCsELs solutions will consume 0.2W. This equates to a cost reduction from $3,500/year for copper to $70/year for photonics.
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