Inside the data centres powering AI: gold racks, demented noise, and 40 diesel generators
AI can seem like magic, a voice from a phone, an answer from nowhere. Step inside the buildings that make it, and the magic evaporates. What is left is noise, heat, metal, and an enormous appetite for power.
Axios’s Amy Harder toured a test server hall run by Digital Realty in Ashburn, Virginia, the heart of America’s “data center alley.”
The first thing she noticed was the sound, which she called “demented white noise.” It comes from fans fighting the heat of racks of AI chips. A glass floor showed the cooling pipes running beneath her feet.
At the bottom of one closet-sized rack sat a gold-coloured Nvidia system. The colour is deliberate, if fake. “Gold is associated with high value and performance,” an Nvidia spokesperson said.
The value is real enough. “That’s about $1 million right there,” a Digital Realty engineer said of the rack.
Built to be boring
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