Cork headquarters
“ At Johnson Controls, we’ ve been privileged to partner with the data centre companies as well as the chip makers,” Katie says.“ Only a year ago it was thought that our chillers needed to produce water as cold as 5 ° C to tackle that heat.”
Through collaboration with chip manufacturers, Johnson Controls has engineered solutions that can achieve the same cooling effect with water at 23 ° C. This seemingly small change translates to massive efficiency gains.“ We calculate that we’ re achieving that cooling with 40 % less energy,” Katie says.
Submarines are the unlikely source of a solution for space efficiency. Johnson Controls has adapted magnetic bearing technology, originally developed for submarines, to create compressors that are 44 % smaller than conventional oil-bearing versions.
This size reduction opens new possibilities for vertical data centre construction.“ When we can produce a machine whose weight and footprint is 44 % less, that’ s not just a nice circular economy sustainability story,” Katie explains.“ That’ s a machine that now can sit on a roof and be supported by a vertical data centre.”
As computing becomes more intensive with each generation of AI technology, heat management becomes more challenging. Katie sees this as an opportunity rather than just a problem.“ It drives us to ever greater improvements in the operational
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