By Shingo Sugime

8:00 JST, July 20, 2024

In 2023, humanity experienced the hottest summer in history. United Nations Secretary General Antonio Guterres expressed his sense of crisis: “The era of global warming has ended; the era of global boiling has arrived.” The threat to human survival from climate change has become an immediate crisis. Along with efforts toward decarbonization, a new challenge has emerged: addressing the “water problem” associated with the advancement of digitization. In the background is the construction of data centers, which are expanding rapidly worldwide.

Digital data is the foundation for all modern services, from education to healthcare. Demand for digital services will continue to grow as generative artificial intelligence gains momentum. The critical infrastructure at the core of this digital age is the data center, a large building specially constructed to house servers and network equipment.

A typical data center has all the facilities necessary for server installation, including high-speed lines for connection to the internet and other external networks, cooling equipment and a large-capacity power supply. The building is earthquake-resistant and seismically isolated, and access is protected by tight security measures, including ID cards and biometric authentication. In case of fire, nitrogen and carbon dioxide will be used instead of water. Together, all of these measures protect the servers from damage.

Data centers have become a huge industry, especially for tech companies, as the race to develop generative AI, which requires enormous computing power, intensifies worldwide. In the United States, Amazon, Google, Meta, Microsoft and other companies have built data centers in various locations.

As with government-subsidized semiconductor plants, there is a rush to build them, and hopes are high that they will replace auto plants and other manufacturing industries as a source of employment. Since........

© The Japan News