Lower-carbon steel and concrete in the construction of data centers" and less steel overall are among the things Amazon said will reduce customers' carbon footprint and make the data centers more than four times more efficient than on-premise computing.
At its annual re:Invent conference in Las Vegas on Monday, Amazon's AWS cloud computing service disclosed numerous changes to its computing infrastructure — with a big emphasis on liquid cooling and renewable energy — to make the case that its service is four times more efficient than on-premise computing.
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"AWS's infrastructure is currently up to 4.1 times more efficient than on-premises infrastructure, and when workloads are optimized on AWS, the associated carbon footprint can be reduced by up to 99%," the company said in a press release, citing a report it commissioned and posted online.
The innovations unveiled Monday include:
- A simplified electrical distribution system that reduces the number of potential failure points by 20%.
- Liquid-cooled servers that "more efficiently" cool high-density compute chips, along with a cooling system that integrates air and liquid cooling to accommodate processors such as the company's own Trainium2 chips and Nvidia's integrated racks, the NVL72.
- A new power shelf that delivers power throughout the rack to achieve "a 6x increase in rack power density over the next two years, and another 3x increase in the future" and "12% more compute power per site" to reduce the total number of data centers needed.
- Lower-carbon steel and concrete in the construction of data centers, and less steel overall.
- The placement of racks in the data centers is optimized using AI models to reduce "stranded power," meaning, power that is usually underutilized.
- Backup generators run on renewable diesel, a "biodegradable and non-toxic fuel that can reduce greenhouse gas emissions by up to 90% over the fuel's lifecycle when compared to fossil diesel."
Hybrid liquid-cooled and air-cooled server racks accommodate a mix of equipment.
Prasad Kalyanaraman, head of AWS Infrastructure Services, said that the changes represent "an important step forward with increased energy efficiency and flexible support for emerging workloads. 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."
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The company said it has "achieved its goal to match all of the electricity consumed by its operations with 100% renewable energy – seven years ahead of its 2030 goal."
The release includes numerous endorsements from partners and customers including Nvidia, Anthropic, and Lexis/Nexis.
Re:Invent runs through Friday, December 6. You can register for free to watch the live stream on the re:Invent site. Keynotes include AWS CEO Matt Garman on Tuesday 8 a.m. PT.