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Congre Wonol Research Serib
infori ing I Ie~ I live (V )ate o I~ 14
February 5, 2025
Data Centers and Cloud Computing: Information Technology
Infrastructure for Artificial Intelligence
The advancement of artificial intelligence (AI), a critical
and emerging technology, presents policy considerations
for U.S. leadership, with implications for economic
competitiveness and national security. Al systems,
including their development, model training, deployment,
operation, applications, and services, rely on an information
technology (IT) infrastructure with components of
hardware, software, networks, data, and facilities. Data
centers are the primary means to house much of this IT
backbone. Internet-based remote computing services (i.e.,
cloud computing) enable Al developers and users to access
computing resources hosted in geographically distributed
data centers. Not only may Al innovation and competition
hinge on the availability of and access to advanced, secure,
and sustainable computing resources, but such IT
infrastructure may also be deemed a strategic national
asset. Related issues have attracted congressional attention
in recent years (e.g., a Senate committee hearing on
advanced computing research and a House committee
hearing on powering Al).
The U.S. government has increasingly focused on policy
directions to support building a robust, domestic Al
infrastructure. For example, President Biden issued
Executive Order (E.O.) 14141, Advancing United States
Leadership in Artificial Intelligence Infrastructure, on
January 14, 2025, providing a federal plan to build Al
infrastructure in the United States. On January 21, 2025,
President Trump announced a private joint venture with
potential investment of up to $500 billion to fund Al
infrastructure, including plans to build up to 20 data centers
in the country. The National Telecommunications and
Information Administration (NTIA), a Department of
Commerce agency serving as the President's principal
advisor on telecommunication and information policies,
issued a request for comments (RFC) to inform
policymaking for sustainable, resilient and secure growth
of data centers to power critical and emerging technologies,
including Al. The RFC received 58 comments, ranging
from the importance of allocating an estimated $175 billion
of potential funds to U.S.-backed global Al infrastructure
projects to challenges faced by domestic data centers, such
as regulatory obstacles for siting new facilities and access
to energy, supply chains, and operational workforce.
This In Focus introduces the use of data center and cloud
computing infrastructure for Al development and Al-
enabled services and selected policy issues for
congressional consideration. For more on Al technologies
and policies, see CRS Report R47644, Artificial
Intelligence: Overview, Recent Advances, and
Considerations for the 118th Congress; for more on energy
issues related to selected data centers, see CRS Report
R45863, Bitcoin, Blockchain, and the Energy Sector.
Overyew of Data Centers
In its simplest form, a data center is a facility that houses
and powers a large computer system. Data centers have
evolved to house multiple enterprise-level, interconnected
computer servers (e.g., a cluster of servers called a server
farm). Personal computers and smart devices connect users
to these servers to access online services (e.g., websites,
emails, and file sharing). Many data centers have expanded
to support cloud computing services, allowing users to
remotely access computing resources such as data
processing chips, software, data storage, networks, and
applications and services hosted by these centers.
The term data center has been defined in federal laws in the
context of energy efficiency and federal use of data centers.
For instance, the Energy Independence and Security Act of
2007 (P.L. 110-140, §453(a)(1)) defines a data center as a
facility that contains electronic equipment used to process,
store, and transmit digital information. In its guidance (M-
25-03) for federal agencies to implement the Federal Data
Center Enhancement Act of 2023 (P.L. 118-31, §5302), the
Office of Management and Budget specified that a data
center (1) is composed of permanent structures and operates
in a fixed location; (2) houses IT equipment, including
servers and other high-performance computing devices, or
data storage devices; and (3) hosts information and
information systems accessed by other systems or by users
on other devices.
Data Centers for Al
The ever-increasing demand for data storage and processing
capacities, especially for intensive computational tasks such
as Al training, has led to construction and operation of
hyperscale data centers. According to industry analysts, to
be considered a hyperscale data center, a facility must
contain at least 5,000 servers and occupy at least 10,000
square feet of physical space, with a power demand
exceeding 100 megawatts (MW). If a data center had a
continuous power demand of 100 MW for 24 hours, it
would consume 2,400 MW-hours (MWh) of energy.
These large facilities provide powerful computing resources
(such as memories, central processing units [CPUs], and
graphics processing units [GPUs]) to handle vast amounts
of data and large-scale workloads. (CPU and GPU are two
major types of computing chips found in most personal
computers and servers.) General-purpose workloads
typically require only a CPU, while a GPU is generally
considered better than a CPU to handle Al computational
tasks. According to the chip manufacturer Nvidia, an Al-
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