Designing a hall for racks that draw over 100 kW
Rack-scale GPU systems changed the unit of design. A data hall is now planned around liquid, weight and power per rack, not floor area.
The newest rack-scale GPU systems draw well over 100 kW each. Traditional data halls were planned around racks drawing a small fraction of that, cooled by air pushed through a raised floor. Put one of today’s racks in that room and almost nothing about it fits.
Liquid to the rack
At these densities, air alone can’t carry the heat away. The GPUs are cooled directly by liquid through cold plates, and the hall is designed around the pipework that delivers it: coolant distribution units, secondary loops and a manifold at every row.
Weight and power
A liquid-cooled rack full of GPUs and busbars is heavy, and it arrives fully built. Floors, ramps and doors have to take it. Power is distributed in large blocks, overhead to each row, rather than under the floor.
None of this is exotic any more. But it has to be designed in from the first drawing, which is why our survey of a building starts with its floor, its roof and its route for pipework, before we count square feet.