The pace of AI adoption is forcing cooling conversations to include power and lifecycle performance across the deployment and delivery of data center infrastructure.
For Becky Wacker, VP of data center solutions at Trane, this evolution is reshaping the relationship between power, cooling, and compute performance.
Wacker is responsible for sales and fulfilment for Trane’s data center business, working closely with customers to understand their thermal management business needs. With her main scope being HVAC equipment, she understands just how the landscape has changed.
“It used to be easier when compute was steady, but now AI workloads are operating hotter and ‘spikier’ – it takes more planning because both cooling and compute are going to use power,” she said. “As we think about different workload densities at the chip, we have to think about how we can react faster. It now needs to be more dynamic.”
During the DCD>Talks episode, Wacker emphasized that the best AI facilities have been co-designed, rather than assembled. In the past, data centers were built in certain regions with favorable characteristics, but now the landscape is evolving to see data centers being built in many different locations with more variable characteristics.
