Digital infrastructure company Equinix has announced the launch of its Equinix Enhanced Performance Innovation Centers, or EPIC. This is a worldwide network of fully operational liquid-cooled environments, available immediately across five international locations: Frankfurt am Main, London, Paris, Osaka and Sydney. Frankfurt is thus among the first data centre markets globally where businesses gain direct access to the new facilities. Further locations are scheduled to follow in 2027.
In the new centres, enterprises can deploy, test and commission cutting-edge IT infrastructure for demanding artificial intelligence applications under real-world production conditions. They are supported by the operator's subject matter experts as well as selected technology partners and hardware manufacturers. The test environments are integrated directly into existing, operational Equinix data centres.
Rising power densities demand new cooling concepts
The transition of artificial intelligence from testing phases into routine production fundamentally alters the technical requirements for data centre real estate. Increasingly powerful GPU platforms are driving a massive surge in rack densities. This makes the deployment of modern liquid cooling systems essential to dissipate heat efficiently and reliably deliver the required computing power. At the same time, many market participants still lack the practical experience and technical expertise to establish high-performance computing and liquid-cooled systems in live operations without delays.
Brian Stein, Senior Vice President Infrastructure Products and Services at Equinix, emphasises in this context that liquid cooling has become an indispensable component of modern enterprise infrastructure for AI applications. The EPIC programme offers companies the opportunity to validate tailored solutions prior to widespread scaling. In this way, the path from feasibility study to full implementation can be significantly shortened and operational risk minimised.
Practical testing under real operating conditions
- —Co-operation with technology partners: Joint testing of integrated liquid cooling solutions with original equipment manufacturers to precisely align all system components.
- —In-depth practical experience: Direct insights into the operational performance of various cooling systems to address technical questions before scaling.
- —On-site testing: Conducting trials on modern GPU and CPU platforms for AI training and inference within operational production data centres.
The current programme builds on previous initiatives by the company. As early as 2022, the operator opened a Co-Innovation Facility to trial new technologies, followed by Solution Validation Centers in 2024 to validate distributed deployments. Practical experience confirms this approach: Matthieu Blumberg, Senior Vice President of Engineering Infrastructure at advertising technology firm Criteo, reports that building up expertise incrementally in live environments was crucial to establishing liquid cooling as a reliable standard for multi-site AI infrastructure.
