What is a data center?

What is a data center?

A data center is a giant warehouse full of servers, storage drives, and networking equipment. These warehouses store and process digital information on behalf of companies or the public. Every time you stream a video, use an app, send an email, or interact with AI like ChatGPT, you're pulling from a data center somewhere.

Important context: Data centers have existed since the dawn of the internet and AI is inescapable - it’s baked into instagram, facebook, linkedin, google, smart devices, etc. The impact of individuals using the internet and AI is on a fundamentally different order of magnitude compared to tech giants like Amazon, Google, and Microsoft. A single large AWS data center can draw power equivalent to powering tens of thousands of homes. AWS operates hundreds of these globally. Individual internet and AI use have a tiny footprint, spread across millions of small devices and modest local infrastructure. Whereas large AWS data centers are pulling hundreds of megawatts of power from these data centers continuously.

Why are data centers popping up everywhere?

Companies like Amazon, Microsoft, and Google are racing to build massive "hyperscale" facilities (hundreds of acres, hundreds of megawatts of power) for cloud computing and AI model training. Pennsylvania has affordable land, a strong power grid, abundant water, and proximity to major cities, so it has become a top target.

What is the impact?

A hyperscale data center can consume as much electricity as 100,000 homes, and can use up to 5 million gallons of water per day for cooling, equivalent to a town of 10,000–50,000 people. The Amazon campus proposed for Falls Township alone is over 2 million square feet.