How Data Centres Work
In October 2026 Thailand's Gulf Development set up a new company to invest in a data centre project of up to 100 megawatts. This film explains what happens inside such a building: how your request travels there as light in glass, what a server and a rack are, how the power never goes off, why every watt becomes heat and how cold and hot aisles and PUE measure the fight against it, why data centres drink water, and why AI chips are forcing a move to liquid cooling. Send a request across the world, cut the grid power, mix and separate the air, and turn an ordinary rack into an AI rack.
Where the cloud lives
A building full of computers that never sleep.
A flash of light
Your tap becomes pulses of light in glass.
Computers without screens
Stacked by the thousand.
The first computer room
One machine once filled a room.
No second without power
Batteries first, then engines.
A country’s worth of power
And it is set to double.
A giant heater
Computing ends as warmth.
Keep hot and cold apart
A simple layout that saves energy.
One number for waste
How much extra does the building need?
Cooling by evaporation
Saving power can cost water.
Ten times the heat
Same floor space, far more power.
Liquid to the chip
Air is not enough any more.
The region builds
Demand in Southeast Asia is set to double.
Electricity in, heat out
The rest is moving power in and heat out.
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