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Yotta 2024 put a central infrastructure challenge on its agenda: how to expand computing for AI without running ahead of available power, cooling capacity, or sustainability goals. The event was scheduled for October 7–9, 2024, at the MGM Grand in Las Vegas. Its agenda ranged from high-density cooling and AI power architecture to edge inference, enterprise spending, and quantum computing. This is a historical look at the event preview, not a report on what ultimately happened at the conference.

What Yotta 2024 put on the data-center design agenda

The September 26, 2024, preview by Drew Robb in Data Center Knowledge framed AI growth as a design problem spanning power, thermal management, capacity, and sustainability. Rather than treating AI as only a server or software issue, the agenda connected it to the systems needed to deliver and manage computing at scale.

That framing appeared in sessions on cooling extreme density and power architecture for AI workloads, alongside discussions of AI deployment at yottabyte scale and generative AI’s effect on enterprise infrastructure strategy and spending. The breadth matters: a facility may need to support not only large training workloads but also inference closer to users, shifting demand and infrastructure requirements across locations.

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Why power availability and architecture mattered

The preview presented access to electricity as a potential constraint on data-center expansion, and highlighted power architecture as a specific topic for AI workloads. It attributed several projections to Goldman Sachs and Omdia analyst Alan Howard; these are figures reported in a 2024 event preview, not current independently verified estimates.

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Figure reported in the 2024 preview Attribution and qualification
Almost 8% of all U.S. power by 2030, compared with less than 2% at the time Goldman Sachs, as attributed by Robb in the September 2024 article.
Up to 160% growth in data-center power demand by 2030 Goldman Sachs, as attributed by Robb in the September 2024 article.
Almost 14% annual growth in IT-load capacity through 2030 Alan Howard, Omdia analyst, as attributed by Robb.
Almost half of data-center capacity used for AI by 2030 Alan Howard, Omdia analyst, as attributed by Robb.
An estimated 45 GW of total demand during 2024–2026, conditional on procuring the power Alan Howard, Omdia analyst, quoted in the article; the estimate was conditional on power procurement.

The figures are best read as the forecasts and estimates the preview cited at the time, not as a present-day planning baseline. The article’s practical emphasis was on the relationship between compute growth and electricity infrastructure: capacity plans depend not only on how many systems operators want to deploy, but also on the power architecture and supply available to support them.

Cooling for denser systems—and sustainability

A session on cooling extreme density and the Liquid Cooling Coalition Pavilion signaled that thermal management was a major part of the event’s infrastructure discussion. As computing systems become more power-dense, operators must assess whether a facility’s cooling approach can remove the resulting heat while fitting its power, space, and operational constraints. The preview identified cooling as an agenda theme; it did not compare specific cooling products or establish which technology is best.

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The sustainability track was described as covering energy efficiency, renewable power sources, and advanced cooling. Schneider Electric and Shell Energy were named in that context, while Jennifer Huffstetler of Intel and Kim Greene of Georgia Power were identified among leaders contributing expertise. Those names indicate the companies and people cited in the event preview, not endorsements or product recommendations.

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AI infrastructure beyond large training clusters

Yotta’s agenda also considered how AI workloads might be deployed in different settings and at different scales:

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  • Edge inference: “From LLMs to Inferencing at the Edge” connected large language models with the infrastructure implications of running inference nearer to where data is generated or used.
  • Large-scale deployment: A session on AI deployment at yottabyte scale addressed infrastructure planning for very large data environments.
  • Enterprise adoption: A panel was slated to consider how generative AI could change enterprise infrastructure strategy and spending. Wendy Schuchart, then editor-in-chief of ITPro Today and Data Center Knowledge, said, “As technology adoption tends to lag behind capability, most enterprises are already behind when it comes to generative AI,” and added, “I’m excited to hear the panel’s thoughts on how to integrate generational AI at scale and how different verticals are adapting and refining their processes.”

The preview also included a session looking at quantum computing and developments after AI, placing future compute technologies in the same broad conversation about how infrastructure may evolve.

What the resource-use figures do—and do not—show

The article cited an Electric Power Research Institute estimate of 0.0029 kWh per ChatGPT question. It also stated figures of 10 gigawatt-hours of power and 700,000 liters of freshwater for training one large language model, linking the power figure to the University of Washington and the water figure to an arXiv paper. The preview does not provide enough detail about the assumptions, model, or calculation boundaries behind those training figures to generalize them to all models or training runs.

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These numbers illustrate why energy and resource use featured in the design discussion, but they are not interchangeable measures. A per-question estimate and estimates for training a model concern different activities; neither alone describes the full energy or water footprint of a data center.

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What the expo themes represented

The event preview described an Ampere AI Pavilion, a Liquid Cooling Coalition Pavilion, and Innovate Arena categories covering rack-level technology, energy and critical power, cooling, AI-driven optimization and automation, and edge and cloud hosting. It also named Vertiv, Digital Realty, Ampere, Iceotope Technologies, Shell Energy, and Schneider Electric in the event context. These mentions establish participation or agenda context as reported in the preview; they do not amount to a comparison of vendors or a recommendation to buy their products.

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How to evaluate data-center design choices

The agenda suggests useful questions for organizations planning infrastructure for AI or other demanding workloads. The preview does not provide product-level answers, so these are evaluation dimensions rather than a ranking of technologies:

  • Power: What power is available at the intended site, and can the facility’s distribution architecture support the workload and its growth?
  • Cooling: Can the cooling system handle the expected rack and system density, and what operational changes would a different approach require?
  • Efficiency and supply: How will energy efficiency, renewable electricity, and other sustainability goals be incorporated into capacity planning?
  • Workload placement: Which tasks need centralized capacity, and which could benefit from inference at the edge or other distributed deployments?
  • Flexibility: Can the design adapt as enterprise AI adoption, automation, or future compute requirements change?

Rebecca Sausner, CEO of Yotta Events, described the event’s intent this way: “As the industry grapples with the demands of AI and machine learning, it’s crucial that we scale responsibly.” She also said, “Yotta 2024 is not just about cutting-edge technologies but about ensuring these innovations are scalable and sustainable for the long term.” Those remarks captured the preview’s emphasis on balancing expansion with the infrastructure and resource constraints that accompany it.

Source and historical context

This account is based on Drew Robb’s September 26, 2024, preview, “Industry Experts Look to the Future of Data Center Design at Yotta 2024”. It described a conference scheduled for October 7–9, 2024, and reported forecasts and resource-use figures with the attributions available in that article. It does not establish whether each forecast remains valid today or provide enough methodological detail to independently assess every underlying estimate.

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