Basic info about data centers

Below are some articles worth looking at to understand some of the history of data centers. One of the main concerns with building massive scale data centers, especially in small communities, is the obsolescence risk. The argument “this time is different” never proves true. The history of technology in general and data centers specifically is the regular innovation. The community that thinks this time the revenue from the data center will continue in perpetuity is fooling itself.

History of data centers - “The evolution of data centers from the 1950s to today is a story of relentless innovation.”

A brief history of data centers - “Of course, further change is inevitable. No one knows what the future holds.”

Clarifying the term “AI data center” — a data center is a building with computers and disk drives in it. Artificial Intelligence is software that runs in a data center. What makes a data center and “AI data center” is simply size. AI software is notoriously hungry for processing power and disk storage. If AI were to disappear tomorrow, we’d have a lot more data centers than we need, but we can run any software in a data center. Other than size, there’s nothing unique to a data center running AI software.