ASHRAE released their 3rd edition of the IT Equipment Power Trends last year, providing a density forecast and new methodology based on a workload-centric view of IT equipment power consumption. With workloads broken down into categories, providing trends as a form factor within different workload groups, this presents a big shift for the industry from rough power projections to estimates based on server form factor and different workloads, bringing together the facility and systems worlds. With such a disconnection between the IT load and the people doing the work in the data center still in existence, this shift is not without its challenges.

This presentation will examine this new workload-specific methodology and the future equipment forecast, addressing the issue that workloads are not always known. What limits are we seeing as we go to higher and higher densities? What does this mean for air flow rates and cooling technologies? Find out where workload-oriented trending will take the industry.