The AI revolution is driving widespread adoption of power-hungry AI servers, fundamentally transforming data centres with higher capacity loads, increasing thermal and power demands.
Wojtek Piorko, Managing Director: Africa at Vertiv, says: “AI is a top priority for organisations around the continent, promising to transform computing and business as a whole. At the same time, AI is driving unprecedented workloads and computing demands, reshaping data centre infrastructure.”
Speaking ahead of the Vertiv AI Innovation Roadshow taking place in Johannesburg this month, he says AI workloads require an evolution in data centre architecture, particularly in power and cooling. “A recent Vertiv study shows that IT racks, which traditionally operated at 5kW to 10kW, are now handling over 40kW per rack, sometimes exceeding 100kW. High-performance computing infrastructure powered by GPUs, such as NVIDIA’s H100 chips, demands significantly more power and cooling than conventional servers,” he says.
To accommodate this shift, data centres must expand power capacity across the entire infrastructure, from grid to chip. Moreover, traditional air-cooling systems are often inadequate for AI hardware, which typically requires five times more cooling capacity than standard servers. As a result, liquid cooling is becoming the primary thermal management strategy.
Piorko notes that new cooling technologies are now commonplace in AI data centres, including direct-to-chip liquid cooling, in which cold plates attached to GPUs and other high-heat components absorb and transfer heat to a liquid, which removes up to 95% of the heat. Another technology is rear-door heat exchangers, which remove residual heat from IT equipment, complementing air-cooling where necessary.
However, there is no one-size-fits-all solution. Meeting AI’s rising power and cooling demands requires innovative, scalable solutions. Vertiv 360AI includes a complete portfolio of power, cooling and services solutions for AI deployments, covering everything from small-scale pilot projects to large AI factories. Vertiv has also developed a series of 30 to 40 reference designs tailored to different AI infrastructure requirements, based on workload demands. These include solutions ranging from straightforward single-rack systems consuming 100kW to large-scale set-ups of 500kW and even 1MW to 2MW, with more being added.
Vertiv’s AI Solutions Innovation Roadshow will showcase the organisation’s ability to support businesses around AI adoption, taking place at The Venue Greenpark in Sandton on Tuesday, 25 March. This one-day event will feature expert talks on the AI revolution and the infrastructure imperatives to enable AI, including liquid cooling, power and rack solutions.
Delegates will get to grips with these trends around new demands on data centres in the era of AI, discover practical solutions to challenges in implementing AI, and see the most advanced and complete portfolio in IT power and cooling infrastructure in the industry.
To register for this event, go to https://www.itweb.co.za/event/vertiv-ai-solutions-2025/.
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