Data centre power consumption drives search for energy efficiency

A POWER crunch is expected to hamper data centre growth across the world as an increase in power-hungry artificial intelligence (AI) processes continues to drive up energy consumption.

Data compiled by Macquarie Research indicated that the power needed to drive a ChatGPT response is about 3 Watt hours (Wh) per request, compared to less than 1 Wh per Google search.

Companies – many of which moved their data to cloud providers during the pandemic – are now paying more attention to the power drawn for AI’s computational needs.