Flex unveils highly integrated data center reference designs to speed up AI infrastructure deployments – News

The original design manufacturing giant Flex Ltd. says it wants to help data center operators scale their operations more efficiently with what is effectively a new blueprint for gigawatt data centers that can support artificial intelligence and high-performance computing workloads.

The company said it’s bundling its power, cooling and computing systems into a series of pre-engineered, modular reference designs for “next-generation data centers,” and says they will enable new computing facilities to be deployed up to 30% faster than traditional designs.

Flex unveiled its integrated designs at the Open Compute Project’s Global Summit in San Jose today, saying they’re the perfect solution for companies that want to deploy new data centers more efficiently.

Traditionally, most data center operators tend to do their own thing when it comes to designing and building new facilities. But the lack of standardization means these bespoke build approaches are often extremely complex, which can extend construction timetables and increase the risk of delays. In addition, such designs often result in unpredictable costs and performance, the company says.

By prefabricating many of the essential building blocks of AI data centers, Flex says it can help to standardize data center design and construction. Its integrated platform consists of new megawatt-scale, high-density, liquid-cooled racks that are designed to support the exponentially rising power demands of AI workloads and enable the transition to 800VDC power architectures.

Other key components include Flex’s newly designed capacitive energy storage system, which helps to reduce electrical disturbances from AI workloads, and a highly scalable modular rack-level coolant distribution unit or CDU that provides up to 1.8 MW of flexible capacity. The designs further incorporate prefabricated power pods and skids, which are pre-engineered modular systems that aim to simplify installation and reduce the need for onsite labor through parallel construction. They also utilize fewer interconnects, and with their offsite assembly, can cut weeks off of data center construction timetables, the company said.

Flex says its semi-prefabricated data centers will save companies thousands of hours of onsite labor, reducing deployment times from an average of one year to as little as six months. Moreover, its designs are extremely flexible, allowing data center operators to adapt them as necessary to integrate their preferred computing systems from partners such as Nvidia Corp. and Advanced Micro Devices Inc.

Data center operators will also benefit from Flex’s lifecycle intelligence software, which provides built-in monitoring for all components, with predictive analytics and system-level optimization tools. In addition, Flex’s reference designs are supported by a robust supply chain network and global services, which provides support at every step of the process, from sourcing to deployment and fulfillment.

Flex President and Chief Commercial Officer Michael Hartung said an integrated design is essential for future data centers, because operators are going to struggle more than ever with power, heat and scale challenges as AI performance demands increase.

“Flex delivers the industry’s deepest hardware stack by integrating power, cooling and compute with vertically integrated manufacturing at scale,” he said. “Its open architecture provides the flexibility required for faster, more predictable deployments, enabling data center operators to keep up with AI demand.”

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