Welcome to connected world, a podcast created for engineers to learn about the latest technology trends, creating a safer, sustainable, productive and connected future. Hello, and welcome to connected world, the podcast from Te connectivity, I'm your host. Today, Tyler cowen, Thanks so much for joining me for this episode of the program. No, on this episode, we're discussing changing trends and developments within cloud data centers with Nathan Tracey. He's a manager of industry standards for data in devices unit at Te connectivity. Nathan, Thanks so much for joining me. All right, you're welcome. Thanks a lot for having me here today, Tyler. Well, I'm excited to dive into this topic, and I think that there's so many avenues that we can explore in this area. But I want you to kick us off with some of the major trends and developments that you've seen in the world of data centers in recent months and maybe over the past year or so. Yes, Tyler, you know, we were directly involved in helping or enabling that the data centers or the cloud to go faster and to meet the evolving needs as our technology changes, technology changes in the cloud. But to your question, the key thing is that their demand on their capabilities is just going through the roof. So whether we're talking about a cloud operator who's focused on the search function or the social media or the Commerce and many of them dabble in all of these different realms, as well as outsourcing and hosting services for various companies and various organizations, it just is creating this tsunami of data that's moving on to the cloud. And they have to try and support that. You know, just to give you a few different statistics. You know, over the last 10 years, we've seen, you know, the typical switching unit of Man, did that we look at from the standpoint of the networking in the cloud is, you know, 10 years ago, it was 640 gigabits per second. And now today, you know, we're in the 2005 terabit generation. And within a short time, you know, a couple of years from now, we'll be talking about 51 one. So just a huge increase in terms of the traffic that they're dealing with, you know, in some of the things that drive that. So the number of connections that are made to the cloud are increasing much faster than the population. So they're increasing at a 10% compound growth rate. And the number of users that are connecting are increasing at a 6% compound annual growth rate. And then the types of connections are changing to, you know, you would think the connection is on your home PC. But now think about all the other things that we're doing with video. And with our cell phones. And now machine to machine connections are growing to become a huge percentage of the demand. And and by about the twenty, 23 time frame, we expect that machine to machine will be upwards of 50% of all the connections into the internet. So, you know, it's not just the fact that we want to watch, you know, on demand video, but the types of connections that we are expecting to be able to go to the cloud for are changing. And, you know, take, for example, video. So we all know that video is a huge driver of cloud traffic. But let's think about how video technologies have changed over the years. So standard definition TV, you know, that's what we all watched, you know, a few years ago. And then we went to HDTV, which is 4, times the bit rate of standard definition TV. And now the next thing is for k, which is double the bit rate of HGTV. So just the fact that we're watching video is driving traffic, but the nature of the video is changing as well over the period of time. And so it's just creating this huge demand into the cloud, things like wi-fi, you know, there's more Wi-Fi hotspot, there's more mobile devices on those hotspots. And the data rate that those hotspots can support is increasing. So it just adds on to the demand. And then 5G cellular networks that are coming into the know, into the use case. Now, you know, in, for example, when 2g cellular technology was rolled out, it took 14 quarters for it to get it as high as 17.8 million connections. Now and give you a more recent data point, 4G technology, you know, the one that we all the mass society uses today, it took them 10 quarters to get to 7.8 million connections, but with 5G quarters is all it's taken to get to that same 17.8 million connections. So everything is just driving. Tremendous pressure and growth expectations onto the cloud operators. That being said, I wonder is, is are the circumstances of the past year, you know, coronavirus and, you know, students doing school from home, you know, parents working from home, all of these different things is that could we look at that as a pretty major stress test for cloud data centers and, you know, the what it's able to withstand? Yeah so I like the way you ask that question because no one planned for this. So this truly is a stress test. No one said, hey, we're going to have everybody stop coming to work next year or last year or, you know, pick your time frame. And so, yes, absolutely. This has been a tremendous stress test and the network has held up well. But at the same time that, you know, we've seen, you know, the network go under this tremendous stress test. Now, you know, we know that there's new applications. And I listed a lot of those new applications that are going to continue to drive demand on top of the fact that folks are working from home more now. And they may continue to work from home to a much larger degree than in the past. And so, yeah, it. This has been a really exciting stress test. I say tense for some of the network operators, but it just keeps us on our toes in terms of what's the timeline? What's the roadmap? When do we need to be ready to enable the next steps in the network evolution? So I suppose the thing that everybody wants to be able to do is to do more. And for it all to go faster, right. So what sorts of bottlenecks exist that right now. Keep that from being a reality for everyone? What sorts of things are out there that people should know about? That is. So you know, I mentioned some of the data rates earlier on that, you know, the changes that we've seen over time. But the it's not just about the data rate. So data rate, is that the descriptor? That's easy for us to provide, whether we're talking about gigabits per second or terabits per second. But when we do increase those data rates, we run into the laws of physics. The loss increases as we increase the data rate. And there's certain things that we can do to mitigate that, but we can't totally eliminate it. So when we talk about the loss increasing, so that decreases the distance that we can send a signal at a higher data rate. So then you have to worry about, OK, so how can we overcome that? Well, we can change some of the modulation schemes that we use. And and so when we do that, then we have to optimize our product to our connectivity solutions for those different modulation formats. As you go to higher data rates, you dissipate more power. So now the power demand into the data center is increasing. We need to find power solutions to allow them to bring more power into the data center and distribute it through the data center. And of course, if they're consuming more power than they're dissipating more power. So now we have thermal problems and they have to figure out how to operate that network in that environment. So how can we help the network operators to maximize the thermal dissipation from the network elements that they're operating? And so it's you know, it's a whole combination of things we're dealing with, with reach challenges. We're changing modulations. We have to deliver more power. We have to help with the thermal mitigation better. And at the same time, it's just this constant March to higher data rates. So it's just a whole symphony of things coming together. Symphony sounds like a good thing. These are all challenges or barriers that all have to be overcome. That's really interesting. So given your expertise and in your experience in these areas, what insights can you provide. And how can you help data centers manage their power consumption? It seems like that's something that's hard to get around. So what solutions exist to help data centers in this regard? So in some applications, data centers are looking at changing their power architecture, changing from an AC to a DC structure to optimize the power consumption and the conversion efficiencies from that. And in their operating there, their racks of equipment at higher power levels. And so we need to be able to deliver higher voltage and higher current solutions to them. So we do that. So, you know, we're in the connectivity business. We provide those power connectors to make sure that the racks stay powered reliably and that they can deliver those higher power loads to the equipment while at the same time making sure that everything stays safe. That's a great point. And I wonder just one of the big mysteries for people right now is what normal looks like in a post pandemic world. Right so what guidance would you give to data centers who are looking to prepare for the future? Right we talked about the stress test at the beginning. And like you mentioned, it was stressful because nobody knew it was coming. We couldn't make preparations or anything like that too far in advance because all of a sudden just a switch flipped in one day, everybody was working from home and doing school from home. And so as people look forward, I think it's natural to wonder, what does life look like in a post pandemic world? What kind of advice would you give to those data centers who are looking to try to prepare and remain, I suppose, flexible and nimble enough to adjust the different challenges and changes? Well, as I mentioned, there are some changes happening in the internal architectures inside the data centers where they're looking at, you know, what are the number of tiers of networking that they have? You know, how do. They implement new technologies such as machine learning and artificial intelligence? And what we're doing is we're developing the solutions that enable those network changes in those technology introductions to happen. Another area is, is the growing presence of the cloud moving to the edge of the network where it's closer to the end users. It allows a number of benefits when they can do that, but they need to move those new technologies like machine learning and artificial intelligence to the edge as well. And again, you know, we're in that space providing solutions for that. In terms of the thermal management challenge, you know that as so the network is now in the mode of deploying 400 gigabit ethernet as the standard data rate. With that came a significant increase in the power dissipation of the optical transceivers that they use. And we develop thermal management solutions that enable them to keep those optics running cooler and more reliably in that environment. In the same way, copper cable solutions that are optimized for these 400 gigabit bandwidths that enable them to maximize the reach as much as can be done at this new higher data rate. And then, you know, just all of the connectivity solutions, both inside the box and outside the box that we can provide to the network operator and to the network operators suppliers. So the folks that are making the network switches, the servers, the storage, you know, all the machine learning devices, they're using these connectivity solutions in their networks. And so we're able to, you know, help them make that new data center of the future operate more smoothly. When we look back on this, what do you think will be the biggest lessons that data centers will learn from this particular experience at this particular time, and how will it be applied forward, do you think? Oh, that's a really hard question. Now I have to dust off my crystal ball and look to the future. So I would say that. And there's no one out there that isn't doing this anyway. So they all have roadmaps. They all have a plan. They understand where their bottlenecks are today and where they're weak links are today. And so they've got a plan. They've identified that. I think the key thing is to make sure that the whole ecosystem is sensed up and aware of their plan. The industry that we're part of, we can do a great job of bringing technology that addresses those bottlenecks or those weak links. But we have to know about it. You know, one of the things I do at t is I'm involved in a number of industry standards. And we can develop solutions in those industry standards. You know, we build the ecosystem that enables the industry to move forward, but we need the communication to know where those bottlenecks are and what the timeline is. And I think the pandemic has heightened the awareness of the need for that communication. And, you know, everyone needs to operate with a degree of secrecy and Stealthwatch because it's how they differentiate themselves. But, you know, there are ways that you can communicate to the industry and to companies like connectivity so that we can be ready when you need to step forward and address that next generation industry roadmap. So I think that's the biggest thing that everyone has observed is, you know, it's the way it works. It's amazing the network works. We've got this resiliency and durability built into the network. Now, let's keep a close eye on the future based on this scare that we're in the process of going through now. For me, putting you on the spot like that, your crystal ball did a fantastic job. And so great, great insight there from Nathan Tracy, manager of industry standards for the data and devices unit at Te connectivity. Nathan, thank you so much for joining us here on connected world. And sharing your insights and expertise. No problem. Thank you very much. Absolutely and everyone, thank you for tuning into this episode and joining us and joining us for the ride here for this particular episode of the podcast. We appreciate it very, very much. Of course, if this is your first time to listen, we have plenty of previous episodes. You can go back and listen to episodes on topics like wi-fi, 5g, lots and lots of different topics covered here from the thought leaders at Te. And so you're going to want to go back and check out those insights as well. And then make sure you subscribe to stay up to date with the latest from TV, because we're constantly coming up with new podcasts and new episodes on different topics. And so you want to stay on top of those things as well. So make sure you subscribe at Apple Podcasts or Spotify to get the latest episodes right there on your phone or your computer wherever you choose to listen. And of course, we'll be back soon with those new episodes. But until then, I've been your host today. Tyler, Thanks for listening.
