We are in the midst of a semiconductor arms race. Manufacturers continue to release increasingly powerful processors designed to manage new types of workloads, including artificial intelligence and machine learning. This “chip” war is understandably concerning some investors. As technology advances at a rapid pace, will the data centres supporting the servers that contain these processors become obsolete?

But these fears may be unwarranted. Innovation will indeed impact data centres, but these risks are both limited and manageable. In fact, the global economy’s increasing reliance on data has only made these facilities more attractive investments.

Rapid evolution

Information technology (IT) infrastructure has been evolving rapidly — exponentially, in fact — for over half a century. Gordon Moore, Intel’s co-founder, observed this exponential evolution in 1965 and predicted it would continue, which it has, spawning what is now called M