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The explosion of artificial intelligence’s popularity has led to a shortage of parts, property and power needed to maintain the data centers the supercomputer technology requires, The Wall Street Journal reports.
It is now taking five times longer to receive custom cooling systems than a few years ago, data center executives say, while delivery times for backup generators have gone from as little as a month to as long as two years.
Earlier this year, data-center operator Hydra Host found itself in a bind, searching for 15 megawatts of power needed to operate a planned facility with 10,000 AI chips. The company went from Phoenix to Houston to Kansas City, Mo., to New York to North Carolina to find the right space. The company has yet to identify where the power will come from.
The locations that had the power didn’t have the right cooling systems required to keep the servers operational, while new cooling systems would take six to eight months to arrive. Meanwhile, buildings that had the cooling didn’t have the transformers required to receive the additional power—those would take up to a year to arrive.
“With what we’re seeing, the fervor to build is probably the greatest since the first dot-com wave,” says Hydra Host CEO Aaron Ginn. He says the search for the right parts and space has taken months longer than expected.
