Just about every day, we see a story about how AI continues to evolve. But what some may not know, notably, is that the infrastructure supporting it must evolve to keep pace.

This makes sense. The growing demand for AI-driven workloads is pushing the boundaries of what traditional data centers can handle. It has forced companies to rethink everything from cooling systems to energy efficiency.

And behind the scenes, a quiet change is happening; one that will power the next generation of innovation while addressing the critical need for sustainability.

Amazon Web Services (News - Alert), or AWS, is at the forefront. With nearly two decades of experience building large-scale data centers, AWS has announced groundbreaking advancements in its infrastructure to meet the unique challenges of AI and machine learning workloads. These innovations, which span power efficiency, cooling systems and modular hardware design, promise to improve performance and reduce the environmental impact of cloud computing.

Redesigning Data Centers for AI

AWS’s updated data center architecture addresses the increasing power density demands of AI workloads. It simplifies electrical and mechanical designs, which results in AWS having enhanced reliability and reduced failure points. A more streamlined electrical distribution system, for instance, cuts energy loss and improves uptime. This offers a 99.99% infrastructure availability. Backup power systems are now located closer to servers, which reduces the risk of outages, while a natural pressure differential is used to exhaust hot air to minimize the need for additional energy-intensive fans.

Cooling, a critical component in high-performance computing, has also seen its share of upgrades. AWS’s introduction of liquid cooling technology enables the efficient operation of advanced AI chipsets, such as AWS Trainium2 and NVIDIA’s (News - Alert) latest GPUs. These systems combine air and liquid cooling for maximum flexibility and performance. Doing this allows the infrastructure to support a wide range of workloads. 

Commitment to Sustainability

Sustainability is important to AWS’s innovation. In fact, the company achieved a 46% reduction in mechanical energy consumption in its new cooling systems, alongside a 35% decrease in the embodied carbon of concrete used in data center construction. Backup generators are transitioning to renewable diesel, which cut greenhouse gas emissions by up to 90% compared to traditional fuels.

AWS’s infrastructure is already up to 4.1 times more energy-efficient than on-premises alternatives, and its ongoing improvements are expected to drive further gains. In 2023, AWS reached its goal of matching 100% of its electricity usage with renewable energy, a milestone achieved seven years ahead of schedule.

“AWS continues to relentlessly innovate its infrastructure to build the most performant, resilient, secure, and sustainable cloud for customers worldwide,” said Prasad Kalyanaraman, Vice President of Infrastructure Services at AWS. “These data center capabilities represent an important step forward with increased energy efficiency and flexible support for emerging workloads. But what is even more exciting is that they are designed to be modular, so that we are able to retrofit our existing infrastructure for liquid cooling and energy efficiency to power generative AI applications and lower our carbon footprint.”

Industry Collaboration and Customer Impact

These advancements are not happening in isolation. AWS has partnered with technology providers like NVIDIA to co-develop liquid cooling systems that meet the demands of AI workloads. Customers such as Anthropic, Experian and LexisNexis (News - Alert) have highlighted how AWS’s infrastructure enables them to innovate while meeting their sustainability goals.

“Data centers must evolve to meet AI’s transformative demands,” said Ian Buck, Vice President of Hyperscale and HPC at NVIDIA. “By enabling advanced liquid cooling solutions, AI infrastructure can be efficiently cooled while minimizing energy use. Our work with AWS on their liquid cooling rack design will allow customers to run demanding AI workloads with exceptional performance and efficiency.”

Construction of new AWS data centers featuring these advancements will begin in the U.S. in early 2025, with components being deployed globally across its 34 Regions and 108 Availability Zones.

AWS will continue to push the boundaries of data center design. In doing so, it is setting a new standard for performance, reliability and environmental stewardship. AWS, essentially, is building the foundation for the next era of technological progress.