FEATURE : ELECTRICITY 4.0
I think the challenge in the industry today is that we ’ ve done fantastically well in developing these amazing chips that can do a lot of things , moving AI ever closer to general intelligence with these high-capacity chips . But at the same time , they need a lot of power . They need a lot of cooling systems , and that ’ s where I think the engineering world of data and energy are really starting to converge .
We have got to enable this growth with better efficiency .
What are your views on some of the major challenges facing the digital infrastructure industry , such as sustainability , energy efficiency , scaling up for AI demand , etc ?
Looking at all of these challenges , there isn ’ t a one company solution . It ’ s going to have to be done by partnership . We have partnerships with the likes of NVIDIA , which wasn ’ t on the radar say a decade ago . new for the industry , so you have to be able to do it with partnerships , and new kinds of partnerships .
The way it has been characterised is that NVIDIA is the jet and Schneider Electric is the aircraft carrier . It ’ s a symbiotic relationship .
I mentioned already about the challenges of energy and doing things more efficiently – and doing it with as many green electrons as possible .
Another challenge is where do you build out these data centres in a way that they ’ re most efficient and ensuring that there is the transmission from the grid , and the infrastructure to support that .
We ’ re seeing linked opportunities at Schneider Electric on the grid infrastructure side , because where there is a big data centre hub being created , there ’ s also a lot of energy infrastructure that needs to be created around it to support it .
We are learning how to design the infrastructure that surrounds this new generation of application . This is
For example , in UAE , to support its AI strategy , its building a whole new power grid with 5,000 MW of power .
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