AI puts connectivity at the heart of data centre design

AI is rapidly transforming data centre infrastructure, pushing connectivity to the forefront of design challenges.

In an interview with Techerati, Jean-Jacques Sage, Chief Business Development Officer at Aginode, highlights how AI workloads are accelerating the shift from 100 Gb/s to 400, 800 Gb/s and beyond, fundamentally changing fibre architectures, power density, and scalability requirements.

AI training environments, mainly operated by hyperscalers, now resemble digital factories, with rack power densities exceeding 50 kW and ultra-high-speed interconnects. Inference workloads, while less demanding, still require existing enterprise and colocation data centres to adapt power, cooling, and connectivity to support AI integration.

According to Jean-Jacques, the key challenge for operators is anticipating future bandwidth and energy needs at the design stage to avoid costly infrastructure rebuilds. Scalable connectivity, advanced fibre solutions, and flexible power and cooling strategies are becoming essential to ensure long-term data centre performance in the age of AI.