By Petre Barac

Copyright thediplomat

Schneider Electric, the leader in the digital transformation of energy management and automation, today announced new reference designs developed with NVIDIA that significantly accelerate time to deployment and aid operators as they adopt AI-ready infrastructure solutions.

The first reference design delivers the industry’s first and only critical framework for integrated power management and liquid cooling control systems, including Motivair by Schneider Electric liquid cooling technologies, and enables seamless management of complex AI infrastructure components. It includes interoperability with NVIDIA Mission Control — NVIDIA’s AI factory operations and orchestration software, including cluster and workload management features. The control systems reference design can also be utilized with Schneider Electric’s data center reference designs for NVIDIA Grace Blackwell systems, enabling operators to keep pace with the latest advancements in accelerated computing, with seamless control of their power and liquid cooling systems.

The second reference design focuses on the deployment of AI infrastructure for AI factories of up to 142 kW per rack, specifically NVIDIA GB300 NVL72 racks, in a single data hall. Created to provide a framework for the next-generation NVIDIA Blackwell Ultra architecture, the reference design includes information on four technical areas: facility power, facility cooling, IT space and lifecycle software. The design is available under configurations for both the American National Standards Institute (ANSI) and the International Electrotechnical Commission (IEC) standards.

The first controls reference design can also be utilized with Schneider Electric’s data center reference designs for NVIDIA Grace Blackwell systems — enabling operators to keep pace with the latest advancements in accelerated computing, while having seamless control of their power and liquid cooling systems.

As AI advances, today’s data center operators rely on reference design frameworks to overcome the speed and deployment challenges of high-density, GPU-accelerated AI clusters. By providing validated, proven, and documented data center physical infrastructure designs, Schneider Electric enables operators globally to design and incorporate next-generation power and liquid cooling controls infrastructure before the newest AI infrastructure solutions even arrive, while optimizing for cost, efficiency, and reliability. Schneider Electric’s fully engineered reference designs are laying the foundation for the latest AI factories, empowering data center operators to not only meet the moment but to be ready before it even happens.

“Schneider Electric is streamlining the process of designing, deploying, and operating advanced, AI infrastructure with its new reference designs,” said Jim Simonelli, Senior Vice President and Chief Technology Officer at Schneider Electric. “Our latest reference designs, featuring integrated power management and liquid cooling controls, are future-ready, scalable, and co-engineered with NVIDIA for real-world applications — enabling data center operators to keep pace with surging demand for AI.”

“We are entering a new era of accelerated computing, where integrated intelligence across power, cooling and operations will redefine data center architectures,” said Scott Wallace, Director of Data Center Engineering at NVIDIA. “With its latest controls reference design, Schneider Electric connects critical infrastructure data with NVIDIA Mission Control, delivering a rigorously validated blueprint that equips operators for today’s and tomorrow’s most advanced accelerated computing infrastructure.”