From High-performance Computing Datacenters to Grid-integrated AI Datacenters

To provide understanding of the opportunities and challenges of datacenters, we describe the basic elements of a datacenter – including power distribution, cooling, and of course computing. We elucidate how these systems create opportunities for dynamic flexibility in capacity, the key element required for grid-integration, and the driving motivation for variable capacity scheduling. We discuss grid dynamics and how growing datacenter demand challenges the decarbonization of the grid with variable renewable generation. This leads to discussion of the important role that datacenters can play in both increasing grid power capacity and accelerating grid decarbonization, and what datacenters (and computation workloads) need to do to help society forward into a more sustainable future, combined with the growth of artificial intelligence. Finally, we discuss some implications for scheduling problems, and some interesting research directions.