Today's massive data centers evolved from single-room mainframes

Most data centers rely on the local power grid to feed power-hungry computer equipment

These facilities house rows of vertical racks containing multiple types of hardware, including servers that provide 24/7 access to online applications, services, and data. In a hyperscale center with thousands of these racks, the annual electricity used is estimated to equal that of 400,000 electric vehicles.

View the layout and components that make up a typical data center

Alongside server rooms for the storage, processing, and transmission of data, data centers include climate control systems to manage the heat generated by microchips, backup systems to ensure systems can run during power outages, offices for on-site personnel, and monitoring and security stations to provide continuous protection against physical threats.

Data center types vary based on location and the workloads they manage

Enterprise data centers are built on-premises and afford businesses greater control over the management and security of their data. Cloud data centers are built off-site and share their resources with millions of users through an internet connection, with the largest—hyperscale data centers—spanning millions of square feet. Managed data centers offer off-site hardware that companies can lease.

Modular data centers can be transported on a truck for rapid deployment

Bypassing the complications involved in building larger facilities over the course of several years, such as construction costs and permits, these pre-fabricated, self-contained pods, roughly the size of shipping containers, can carry thousands of graphics processing units for small- and medium-scale AI-related tasks.

AI data center growth has created shortages and price hikes in computer parts

The parallel processing needed to power large language models for AI chatbots and other tools drove demand for high-speed graphics processing units to spike in 2025, enabling capital-rich technology companies to price out consumers. Similar demands for the computer memory used in storage drives are expected to keep shortages from easing through 2028.

All computers are defined by their ability to input, store, process, and output data

From wooden machines to wearable tech, computers have changed a lot in appearance, but they all still perform the same essential tasks. Early computers were made of wood and metal—some were so big that they filled entire rooms just to solve simple math problems.

A timeline of computer history

The earliest computers bear little resemblance to the computing devices that most people rely on today. This timeline graphic from the Computer History Museum tracks their evolution, from the early days of bulky mainframes that only experts generally used through to the personal computing revolution and on to the modern mobile era. Readers will learn important context ahead of the next major computing platform shift.

Microsoft's Azure cloud computing platform serves customers in 140 countries

Rather than owning and maintaining hardware on-premises, cloud computing enables users to access large reserves of storage and processing power over the internet, much like customers connect to a utility provider rather than generating their own electricity. This centralization also standardizes security tools and updates.

Personal computers became more common in the late 1970s, making working from home more viable

As the internet and email became more popular in the 1990s, more infrastructure that would eventually support remote work was created. But the practice was still relatively uncommon until the COVID-19 pandemic, when white-collar workers first took to working from home en masse.

Grace Hopper warned against prioritizing hardware purchases in future computing

Foreseeing the rising volume of data and the increasing demand for its processing and access, she advocated that organizations first map the total flow of information they require and then choose infrastructure to support it, rather than wastefully spending on the fastest computing technology and forcing software to compensate for unnecessary hardware or incorrect data.

The hardware powering AI was originally designed for video game graphics processing

Graphics processing units are specialized computer chips that can process multiple data streams in parallel, including pixel colors for a display. Such processing is required to find connections across text data and generate outputs quickly.

DNA computing allows for storage and processing of massive amounts of data

Although costly and less efficient for simpler tasks, as of 2025, DNA could hold 455 exabytes of data with near limitless parallel computation potential in small data centers. Every movie ever made would fit inside the volume of a single sugar cube.

The cloud relies on hardware infrastructure with real-world limits

While unlimited storage providers exist, this does not mean online storage is limitless, as it relies on servers, cables, power, and physical space, all of which are finite. However, the cloud seems infinite because the number of servers and data centers built outpaces demand. Storage solutions are also routinely replaced with more efficient options.

Noise and instability made quantum computing seem out of reach for decades

Recent advances in error suppression, mitigation, and correction are allowing quantum computers to perform practical tasks that challenge classical machines. IBM’s 2016 launch of its first cloud-accessible quantum computer attracted over 22,000 users in its first month alone.

Machine learning lets computers learn from data instead of relying on programming

ML is a core part of artificial intelligence and is foundational to applications like chatbots, fraud detection, and self-driving cars. Businesses are also adopting it to improve efficiency and identify patterns in data, though the latter may be inaccurate.

Moore's Law came from observing exponential computing growth in the 1960s

In 1965, Gordon Moore, cofounder of Intel Corporation, observed a four-year trend of constant growth rate in computing power. Hypothesizing the trend would continue, his observation became the benchmark that the computing industry has worked to maintain for 60 years.

Electrical grids worldwide must double their power delivery capacity by 2050 to meet surging demand from AI and electric vehicles.

Upgrade cost and compatibility issues have kept Microsoft's legacy systems alive

As of 2025, Windows XP and Windows NT continue to power ATMs and transit systems, while Deutsche Bahn's trains use Windows 3.11 for display systems. Microsoft's continued support for these operating systems helps it maintain its dominance in the business sector.

Amazon has fulfillment centers all over the world

Amazon fulfillment centers are the large warehouses where products that customers have ordered are stored, packed, and shipped. In order to efficiently manage inventory and process millions of orders each day, the centers rely heavily on advanced technology and robotics.

Clouds' subtle climate effects require significant computational power to simulate

Responsible for reflecting sunlight and preventing thermal energy from entering the Earth system while also trapping energy and keeping it in the system, clouds are understood to substantially influence climate predictions. Because even supercomputers struggle to accurately model their dynamic behavior, researchers have used AI to indirectly incorporate clouds into climate models.

Minor technology failures can spiral into massive internet outages

A mix of centralized cloud infrastructure and legacy protocols leaves the internet susceptible to downtime from minor cyberattacks or software bugs, infrastructure damage caused by extreme weather, and human error if a DNS service provider—the internet's phone book—or a backend system, such as Amazon Web Services, were compromised.

Fintech relies on technology, not physical location, to serve financial customers

Most of the industry's prominent players were created since 2010, and are still in a growth phase. These institutions have broadly disrupted traditional banking and have pushed physical banking locations toward obsolescence.

The three major credit bureaus were created in the mid-1900s to sort local credit reporting into national databases

In the 1800s, credit bureaus went into business to help lenders make decisions. But today's three major credit bureaus, Experian, Equifax, and TransUnion, didn't become the industry leaders they are today until the 20th century, around the same time FICO was founded.

Explore (digitally) the Computer History Museum

When IBM’s Deep Blue supercomputer won its famous chess rematch with then world champion Garry Kasparov in May 1997, the victory was hailed far and wide as a triumph of artificial intelligence. But John McCarthy—the man who coined the term and pioneered the field of AI research—didn’t see it that way. An obituary about McCarthy—who passed in 2001—and his ideas.

The original 'four horsemen' of tech were Intel, Dell, Microsoft, and Cisco

These companies became known as the "four horsemen of tech" for the influence the companies had both on other businesses and investors in the late 1990s and early 2000s. The expansion of internet infrastructure throughout the 1990s and the dot-com bubble lifted these companies to incredible heights.

Microchips in payment cards improve security by generating unique transaction codes

Magnetic strips store unchanging data that is easily cloned, but microchips act as miniature computers that encrypt sensitive data. They also resist fraud by creating data unique to each transaction, preventing duplication.

The name 'Silicon Valley' arose from the founding of Shockley Semiconductor Laboratory in Fairchild Semiconductor in 1956-57, founded near Stanford University in Palo Alto

English mathematician Ada Lovelace wrote the first computer algorithm a century before computers existed and hypothesized that computing devices would one day be able to compose music—foreseeing the generative AI systems of today.

A vending machine run with Anthropic's AI went out of business after it was convinced to give away items for free and sell a video game console.

How Amazon operates a 'flywheel' business model, a self-reinforcing cycle that drives continuous growth

The history of many kitchen appliances involves unexpected discoveries and applications, including wartime radar turned hamster defroster and replacing an 'ice king' with heat-stealing boxes.

When you complete a CAPTCHA on a website to prove you are human, you may be unknowingly training algorithms for self-driving cars, whose systems require training data to help identify crosswalks, bicycles, and other outdoor objects.

Massive 3D printers have been used to build homes by stacking layers of 'concrete toothpaste,' a fire-resistant material that effectively insulates against outside noise.

Explore fun facts from the USPS, including unique post office buildings, a stamp that traveled past Pluto, and more.

US consumers collectively owe more than $1T to credit card companies—almost as much as they owe in auto loans.

Scientists can determine Earth's past climate conditions by analyzing air trapped in microscopic bubbles within ice cores—columns of compressed snow layers that build up over hundreds of thousands of years.

The animatronic shark from Steven Spielberg's 'Jaws,' the first modern blockbuster, was a complex underwater apparatus called 'Bruce.'

The Nasdaq's 'Magnificent 7' companies are responsible for roughly 40% of the Nasdaq 100 index's gains, while the remaining 93 companies account for the other 60%.

Long before Major League Baseball began allowing instant replay for balls and strikes, an umpire reluctantly used the technology to determine whether a hit was a home run, a move that inadvertently ushered in a new era for the sport.

Budweiser stores yeast derived from the original 1800s strain in a secret bunker, which only the Head of Yeast Management can access—not even the CEO

While atoms are normally made of protons, neutrons, and electrons, exotic ones have been built with antimatter—alternate versions of normal matter that live for fractions of a second and are about a billion times as rare.

Larger animals like giraffes, elephants, and blue whales have developed a unique defense against cancer, a phenomenon known as Peto's Paradox

Sony set the standard for cylinder-shaped batteries when it repurposed manufacturing equipment used to make rolls of magnetic recording tape.

The first image of a black hole was captured by creating an Earth-sized virtual observatory from a network of eight radio telescopes.

Dorothy's famous entrance into Oz in 'The Wizard of Oz' relied on analog tricks, including a body double and sepia-toned paint, as much as it did on technology

Watch how deep-sea mining equipment collects and processes polymetallic nodules—metal-rich, potato-shaped rocks—from the ocean floor and creates environmentally damaging plumes of sediments.

Search a massive database of over 4 decades of clues from the TV quiz show 'Jeopardy!'

For centuries, it was common to sleep in two shifts: a few hours at the beginning of the night, and a longer period beginning around midnight

The word 'jazz' evolved from 'jasm,' 19th-century American slang for 'energy'