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Data center glossary
Plain-language answers to the questions that come up most, each grounded in the facilities Compute Atlas tracks.
5 topics
All glossary topics
- How Much Water Does a Data Center Use?Cooling a large data center can consume millions of gallons of water a year — here's how facility-level water use is tracked and reported.
- How Much Power Does a Data Center Draw?From megawatts of critical IT load to gigawatt-scale campuses — a breakdown of how data center power draw is measured and reported.
- What Is an AI Data Center?AI data centers are purpose-built for GPU-dense training and inference workloads — how they differ from traditional cloud and colocation facilities.
- What Is Behind-the-Meter Power?Some data centers generate their own power on-site rather than drawing entirely from the grid — what "behind-the-meter" means and why it's growing.
- Why Do Communities Oppose Data Centers?Noise, water use, land, and grid strain — the recurring reasons local communities push back on proposed data center projects.