Rakuten Cuts Data Center Power 36% with Ampere AI Platform

Tokyo, Japan—Rakuten Group has announced a strategic partnership with Ampere Computing LLC, a U.S. semiconductor design company, to reduce data center power consumption. 

This marks the first large-scale deployment of Ampere's platform in Japan.

The collaboration follows successful trials initiated last year. 

Rakuten achieved a 36% reduction in power consumption and an 11% improvement in space efficiency at its container services within the Rakuten Cloud infrastructure.

Rakuten plans to expand its use of Ampere's platform next year as part of its efforts to enhance data center power efficiency. 

The initiative comes as the company faces increasing power demands from AI applications while pursuing its carbon neutrality goals.

"As AI adoption drives up demand for computing resources, we need to consider infrastructure and methods for more sustainable cloud operations," said Hironori Yoshida, Executive Officer and Vice Director of the Cloud Platform Division at Rakuten.

According to Sean Varley, Ampere's chief evangelist and VP of business development, the partnership aims to implement scale-out processing capabilities in Rakuten's internal cloud environment while reducing power consumption and improving performance.