The growth of internet services and data-intensive applications has increased exponentially over the past 10 years and is expected to grow even faster in the coming years. This growth in data consumption can in large part be attributed to increasing demand for more advanced data-rich technologies and applications often grouped under the name “4th industrial revolution” (4IR) including augmented and virtual reality (AR/VR); virtual conferencing; artificial intelligence and machine learning (AI/ML); internet-of-things (IoT); and even blockchain technology. To support these online services and applications, millions of servers housed in data centers across the world create, aggregate, process, store, and communicate data at a computational scale that is challenging to fully comprehend.
While the transition to centralized cloud and ‘hyperscale’ solutions at the network core could afford major efficiency gains through economization and virtualization, market movement toward real-time applications could have a convoluted impact on favorable centralized data center energy demand projections. To that end, the advanced applications and technologies that make up 4IR will often rely on both capacity and speed. This transition will require significant changes in requisite systems architecture to support latency-sensitive applications. While cloud and ‘hyperscale’ solutions provide major benefits to support demand growth, edge compute and supporting…