AI workloads are reshaping every layer of data centre architecture. In this 30-minute keynote at Data Centres in the AI Era, Mark Fenton, Product Engineering Director at Cadence Design Systems examines:

• Escalating resource demands – rack densities trending from today’s 120 kW to 600 kW and beyond, plus the implications for grid capacity, cooling media, and water consumption.
• Liquid-cooling adoption – comparative insights on cold-plate and immersion technologies, risk-mitigation strategies, and retrofit vs. green-field deployment economics.
• Digital-twin optimisation – how physics-based, GPU-accelerated simulation cuts design iterations, validates power-and-thermal resilience, and enables ‘what-if’ analyses before capital is committed.
• AI-enabled operations – fault detection, capacity forecasting, and automated energy-management use cases that extend facility life while meeting emerging regulatory requirements.