A leaked roadmap from Gigabyte shows how data center chips will consume 500 watts and even 1,0000 watts by the end of next year. Cooling these components becomes a major challenge.

By late 2024 and early 2025, powerful new CPUs and GPUs for the data center will require up to 1,000 watts of power. This emerges from a leaked slide from Gigabyte. Specifically, Gigabyte expects a power consumption of 600 watts to 1,000 watts for Nvidia’s super chip Grace Hopper. Other chips don’t look much better. According to Gigabyte’s forecasts, even classic processors will consume more than 600 watts.

The enormous numbers are more than triple what was the norm not so long ago. For example, a scalable third-generation Intel Xeon processor with 24 cores has a TDP of just 150 watts. TDP and consumption are not identical, but go hand in hand. The leaked figures give an accurate indication of the amount of heat Gigabyte believes it should be removing from tomorrow’s servers.

Alternative cooling

In order to efficiently keep the most powerful servers of tomorrow fresh, classic cooling methods are pushed to their limits. It’s more likely that such hot hardware will accelerate the adoption of alternatives. It is not for nothing that Gigabyte works with various companies that specialize in liquid cooling. Both direct liquid cooling and immersion cooling, in which an entire server is immersed in a non-conductive liquid, are better at capturing heat.

The leaked slide itself is unofficial, but there’s little reason to doubt its contents. For example, AMD’s SP5 socket is designed for 700 watt CPUs, which is even more than expected. The figures show how difficult it will be to efficiently maintain powerful data centers in the near future.