Google's 1-GW Data Centre to Rely on Air-Cooling Amid Local Protests

Google's planned 1-GW data centre in Visakhapatnam district will use air-cooling technology to cool its servers, according to reports. This decision follows sustained local protests and pressure from civil society groups.

A large data centre generates a significant amount of heat due to the billions of transistors used by processors, which manipulate electrical current to perform operations on data.

The 1-GW data centre will produce approximately 1 GW of heat, requiring effective cooling technology to remove this excess heat. Air-cooling involves using fans to push cool air through or around server racks and then collecting the hot air for cooling.

However, air-cooling comes with its own trade-offs, including lower infrastructure costs upfront but a 'thermal wall' issue where air-cooling can only remove up to 40 kW per rack. For modern AI chips like Nvidia's Blackwell, which generate 700-1,000 W per GPU, this means installing racks in wind tunnels or using large amounts of noise-producing fans and chillers.