Schneider Electric has announced new reference designs co-developed with NVIDIA, aiming to accelerate deployment of AI-ready infrastructure in data centers. The company reports that its new designs deliver integrated frameworks for power management and liquid cooling control, targeting operators planning high-density GPU clusters and advanced AI infrastructure.
The first reference design introduces what Schneider Electric claims is the industry’s first framework for integrated power management and liquid cooling control systems. This solution incorporates liquid cooling technologies from Motivair by Schneider Electric and is interoperable with NVIDIA Mission Control, supporting cluster and workload management for AI factory operations. The design also enables compatibility with Schneider Electric’s data center reference designs for NVIDIA Grace Blackwell systems, allowing operators to manage both power and cooling for accelerated computing deployments.
The second reference design provides a framework for deploying AI infrastructure in data halls with rack densities up to 142 kW, focusing specifically on racks using the NVIDIA GB300 NVL72 platform. The design covers four key technical domains: facility power, cooling, IT space, and lifecycle software, and is available in both American National Standards Institute and International Electrotechnical Commission configurations.
Schneider Electric says the controls reference design uses a “plug-and-play” architecture based on the MQTT protocol, bridging operational technology infrastructure with information technology systems. The design features a standardized data interface for power management and liquid cooling data, redundancy across cooling and power distribution (including coolant distribution units and remote power panels), and new guidance for monitoring AI rack power profiles.
For high-density AI cluster deployments, the NVIDIA GB300 NVL72 reference design supports up to 142 kW per rack and up to 1,152 GPUs using liquid-to-liquid CDUs and high temperature chillers. It also includes digital twin simulation models with Schneider Electric’s ETAP and EcoStruxure IT Design CFD software to optimize power and cooling configurations for individual data center applications.
Jim Simonelli, Senior Vice President and Chief Technology Officer at Schneider Electric, said, “Schneider Electric is streamlining the process of designing, deploying, and operating advanced AI infrastructure with its new reference designs,” adding, “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 centre operators to keep pace with surging demand for AI.”
Scott Wallace, Director of Data Centre Engineering at NVIDIA, said, “We are entering a new era of accelerated computing, where integrated intelligence across power, cooling and operations will redefine data centre architectures,” and continued, “With its latest controls reference design, Schneider Electric connects critical infrastructure data with NVIDIA Mission Control, delivering a rigorously validated blueprint that enables AI factory digital twins and empowers operators to optimise advanced accelerated computing infrastructure.”
Schneider Electric reports that it has developed nine AI reference designs for various data center scenarios, including prefabricated modules and retrofit deployments, demonstrating its ongoing collaboration with NVIDIA to address evolving AI workloads in the data center industry.
Source: Schneider Electric
