Murray Irvine, Senior Director, Global Specialty Sales (GSS), Central and Eastern Europe, Middle East, Turkey and Africa (CEEMETA), Dell Technologies, tells us how liquid cooling is transforming data centres, driving energy efficiency and preparing infrastructure for the AI revolution.
As we look to 2025, AI is reshaping the data centres of the future, driving innovation, efficiency and sustainability in our increasingly data-driven world.
The urgency to modernise infrastructure and adopt AI technologies has never been more pronounced.
According to a report by Allied Market Research, the global AI data centre market is projected to reach US$90.46 billion by 2027 with a compound annual growth rate of 20.9%. Across the CEEMETA region, we’re witnessing this momentum first-hand, as organisations strive to harness vast amounts of data while navigating challenges such as scalability, security and the need for real-time insights.
The rise of AI workloads, however, presents a dual challenge: increased energy demand and a pressing need for efficiency. While headlines highlight AI’s energy intensity, the strides made in data centre efficiency are remarkable. What once required six servers can now be achieved with one, drastically reducing energy use.
At Dell, we’ve been transforming data centre design for over 30 years. Our PowerEdge servers, the fastest-growing solution in our history, exemplify how sustainability and innovation can co-exist. Designed with advanced air and liquid cooling options, these systems provide significant energy savings while offering customers three times the performance.
We’ve also been at the forefront of developing advanced cooling solutions for over a decade, providing unique capabilities to deliver both liquid-cooled and air-cooled AI servers.
As AI use cases grow, liquid cooling is emerging as the next frontier in data centre efficiency. Direct liquid cooling (DLC), exemplified by Dell’s PowerEdge XE 9680L, represents a game-changing shift in efficiency. This 8-way GPU server incorporates direct-to-chip liquid cooling, improving overall power efficiency by 2.5 times.
The evolution of cooling technologies is driven by the accelerating density levels in data centres. Where racks once operated at 5 kW to 20-50 kW, today’s cutting-edge designs are handling upwards of 100 kW, with the potential to reach 400-500 kW per rack in the near future. Liquid cooling and higher voltage power distribution are driving this change, enabling data centres to optimise for this expanded range while maintaining energy efficiency.
Looking ahead, our focus is on future-proofing data centres to power the coming wave of AI computing with modular designs, high-speed networking and advanced liquid cooling solutions to boost efficiency and flexibility.
The next era of data centre cooling is about more than energy efficiency; it’s about creating adaptive, future-ready solutions that address the environmental and operational demands of AI-driven workloads. This approach ensures that businesses can compete today while maintaining the agility to adopt tomorrow’s transformative technologies.
