Cooling
Where the heat changes hands
A coolant distribution unit sits between the building’s water and the servers’ coolant. Tracing one circuit through it makes liquid cooling much easier to picture.
Stories
Land, power, cooling and compute. The decisions shaping digital infrastructure around the world.
Design
The data center that arrives by truck
Factory-built rooms move work off the construction site. They still have to be connected, tested and proven where they land.
Compute
An AI factory is still a place
The phrase draws attention to what a building produces. Independent figures show how fast that part of the industry is growing, and how much data center electricity the IEA expects to remain outside it in 2030.
Connections
The network does not end at the coast
A global data center depends on routes far beyond its fence. Cable diversity, landing stations and repair arrangements determine what a second connection really protects.
Environment
The water that stays. The water that leaves.
Closed-loop cooling describes a circuit. A data center’s water footprint depends on where the heat goes next.
Operations
The pump is running. Why is the rack getting hotter?
An imagined commissioning test shows the gap between a pump that runs and cooling that arrives.
Land
A data center site is more than a plot of land
Power, water, networks and permission all have to arrive at the same address. A global guide to the questions that turn a promising site into a usable one.
Power
The megawatt needs a delivery date
Data center power is a question of timing and location as well as quantity. Grid access, facility demand and flexibility need to be read together.
Compute
What does a megawatt of AI actually produce?
Tokens connect AI infrastructure to its output. To make that metric useful, hold the workload, response quality, latency and energy boundary in view.
Photographs. Where the heat changes hands (Kestrel / CC BY-SA 4.0, cropped); The data center that arrives by truck (Tsgrayson / CC0); An AI factory is still a place (Oak Ridge National Laboratory / CC BY 2.0, cropped); The network does not end at the coast (U.S. Department of Energy / public domain); The water that stays. The water that leaves (Tony Webster / CC BY 2.0, cropped); The pump is running. Why is the rack getting hotter? (Amy Burgess / ORNL, U.S. Dept. of Energy / CC BY 4.0, cropped); A data center site is more than a plot of land (Tedder / CC BY 4.0); The megawatt needs a delivery date (Savannah River Site / CC BY 2.0); What does a megawatt of AI actually produce? (Carlos Jones / ORNL, U.S. Dept. of Energy / CC BY 4.0).