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Data Center Demand: Compute, Memory, Storage, and Networking | Intel Technology

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How much data can a data center hold?

In this What That Means video, Camille talks with Allison Goodman, Senior Principal Engineer at Intel. They get into the operational side of data centers, as well as the growing need for both cloud and edge computing to ease data center demands.

What Makes a Data Center? Compute, Memory, Storage, and Networking

Allison first outlines what makes a data center—and that’s the combination of compute, memory, storage, and networking working together. Some data centers are small and can be kept onsite, while most others are what refers to being “in the cloud” at offsite locations in large data centers. The rise of cloud computing quickly led to the popularity of using data centers from everything for simple data storage to more advanced computing for software and app development.

We can do amazing things with data centers now thanks to cloud computing, but Allison notes how tricky smooth operations can be to maintain. It takes a delicate balance of compute, memory, storage, and networking in data centers to prevent delays. Allison explains how each of the four components should ideally work together.

Improving Data Center Efficiency with Both Cloud and Edge Computing

The growing use of machine learning and AI brings growing data-heavy workload demands on data centers. Allison explains how previously, data center engineers focused on optimizing compute power above all else, but this has now caused an imbalance in data center workflow. Now, engineers are shifting their perspective from compute-first optimization to data-first optimization.

Shifting to a data-first view will ultimately lead to less time, energy, and money spent on moving data between the data center and connected devices. Instead of moving the data back and forth as often, the processes of moving and analyzing the data are moving closer to the data’s source. This includes new processes like compute express lane for memory sharing among devices.

According to Allison, the future of data center efficiency is a combination of both cloud and edge computing—thereby saving money and energy and also improving sustainability.

Allison Goodman, Senior Principal Engineer at Intel

Allison Goodman data center demand cloud computing edge computing

Allison has been with Intel for two decades, serving in a wide variety of roles. In her current role as Senior Principal Engineer in the Data Center Group at Intel, Allison closely works with customer teams to understand their memory and storage bottlenecks, along with collaborating to create solutions through software and hardware changes. Beyond Allison’s work with Intel, she has served in leadership roles with the Society of Women Engineers. Allison has a degree in Electrical and Computer Engineering from Cornell University.

 

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The views and opinions expressed are those of the guests and author and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of Intel Corporation.

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