Telecom, chips and data centers
PUE (power usage effectiveness)
Total data center power divided by the power used by the computing equipment.
Last reviewedWhat does PUE (power usage effectiveness) mean?
Power usage effectiveness is a data center's total facility energy divided by the energy used by the IT equipment (servers, storage and network). The rest goes on cooling, power conversion and lighting. A PUE of 1.0 would mean every unit of power reaches the computers, so lower is better. Example: an IT load of 100 MW with a PUE of 1.3 needs 130 MW in total, so 30 MW goes on overheads. In a hot climate, cooling pushes PUE up, which raises electricity costs. The measure was introduced by The Green Grid industry group and is now an international standard, ISO/IEC 30134-2.
Where does it come up in case interview prep?
- How the chip, electronics, and data center value chain worksLesson in Semiconductors, electronics, and data centers
- Chip and data center economics: utilization, yield, and powerLesson in Semiconductors, electronics, and data centers
- How data centres, cloud and AI compute workLesson in Data centres, cloud and AI compute
- Data centre economics: per MW, per rack and per GPU hourLesson in Data centres, cloud and AI compute
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