New data and forecasts from Synergy Research Group show that the average capacity of hyperscale data centers to be opened over the next six years will soon be more than double that of current operational hyperscale data centers. While the trend has always been for the critical IT load of hyperscale data centers to grow in size over time, the impact of generative AI technology and services has provided an added impetus to the need for substantially more powerful facilities. Meanwhile, as the average IT load of individual data centers ramps up, the number of operational hyperscale data centers will continue to steadily grow. There will also be some degree of retrofitting existing data centers to boost their capacity. The overall result is that the total capacity of all operational hyperscale data centers will grow almost threefold in the next six years.
The hyperscale research is based on an analysis of the data center footprint and operations of 19 of the world’s major cloud and internet service firms, who meet Synergy's criteria for being considered hyperscale operators. This includes the largest operators in SaaS, IaaS, PaaS, search, social networking, e-commerce and gaming. By mid-2023, those companies had 926 major data centers in operation around the world. Synergy's known pipeline of future data centers includes a further 427 facilities, which is one of the main inputs to Synergy's forecast model.
The mix of hyperscale data centers continues to change, region by region, and owned versus leased, but in aggregate the total number of worldwide data centers has doubled in the last five years. The impact of recent generative AI advances is not so much to increase the number of data centers - which will continue to grow by well over a hundred per year - but to substantially increase the amount of power required to run those data centers. As the number of GPUs in hyperscale data centers skyrockets, driven primarily by AI, so the power density of associated racks and data center facilities also need to increase substantially. This is causing hyperscale operators to rethink some of their data center architecture and deployment plans.
About Synergy Research Group
Synergy Research Group provides quarterly market share analysis and forecasts for Communications and Cloud related industries. Our data and analysis is provided to clients through Synergy’s unique research SaaS platform, SIA™, which enables intuitive access to complex and fast-moving data sets.
Synergy’s Competitive Matrix™ and CustomView™ take this research capability one step further, enabling our clients to receive on-going quantitative market research that matches their internal, executive view of the market segments they compete in. Synergy’s data analytics and analysis have been widely recognized worldwide for over 20 years and are frequently used by global industry leaders, governments, and financial institutions.
