What is a data centre? Expert explains amid Regina debate

A proposed artificial intelligence data centre near Regina is stirring up questions about energy use, water consumption and noise, but also revealing a simpler question many people were asking: What exactly is a data centre?

Jason Hlady, director of research, library and data centre technologies at the University of Saskatchewan, said the technology at the centre of the debate is actually something most people rely on every day, even if they never see the buildings behind it.

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“A data centre is just a facility where many computers are housed and operated,” Hlady said. “They need to be housed in a facility which is secure and has electrical power, good network connectivity to the outside world and to the internet and excellent air conditioning and cooling to manage the heat that all of those computers generate.”

Plans for a large AI-focused facility near Regina have drawn attention from residents and local officials in and around the city. Project documents linked to Bell describe a potential campus south of the Wascana Golf and Country Club that could eventually include roughly 500,000 square feet of data centre space.

Hlady said while the buildings may look new and complex, the concept itself had been evolving for decades.

“I think in 1972, they were server rooms,” he said. “These days, they’re more and more sophisticated. They’re more fault-tolerant, they’re better at managing environmental needs. But they’re there to house computers, keep them operating and safe and manage some of the waste products, including heat.”

Those facilities quietly power many of the online services people use every day.

“You may have heard of services hosted in the cloud, or how Netflix delivers services to us,” Hlady said. “The computers and the storage that ultimately make those services work are housed in many big data centres around the world.”

As more technology – particularly artificial intelligence – moves online, Hlady said communities are seeing more of these facilities proposed.

“I think there are a variety of companies and groups who see opportunity in a province like ours,” he said.

“There’s also growing interest in keeping data and computing capacity local – Canada first, Saskatchewan first – rather than relying entirely on infrastructure somewhere else in the world.”

Resource, environmental concerns raised

Some residents near the proposed Regina site have raised concerns about environmental impacts, including electricity demand and water used for cooling. Hlady said those concerns are reasonable and that modern data centres increasingly try to address them.

“All computers end up using electricity and energy to do work,” he said. “The waste product from using that energy is heat, which then needs to be managed.”

Water is often used in that cooling process because it absorbs heat efficiently, though he said the industry is constantly looking for ways to reduce environmental impacts.

“Being thoughtful about environmental impact and our consumption of resources, that’s really important in data centre design,” Hlady said.

Facilities can be loud inside from cooling equipment and computer fans, but he said those sounds rarely travel far beyond the buildings.

“Facilities are often noisy inside,” he said, “but generally they’re pretty quiet to the surrounding areas.”

Hlady said communities considering projects like the one proposed near Regina should pay attention to several key factors, including who would benefit from the infrastructure and how the facility would be powered.

“Who’s going to be served by the data centres?” he said. “How is the community going to be served by them, and what sort of computing services are going to be offered?”

With artificial intelligence rapidly expanding worldwide, Hlady said Canada is likely to see more projects like this in the future.

“Yes, I think this probably is among the first sorts of things,” he said.

“And it won’t be the last time we see investment in this area.”

– with files from 980 CJME’s Geoff Smith