Modern large-scale data centers are known for their engineering complexity, cooling, and oversubscription challenges. To mitigate these issues, this article proposes the implementation of community data centers that are closer to consumers as part of the data center ecosystem. Having a community data center can reduce latency, minimize network burden on Internet Service Providers (ISPs), utilize full computing capability, available during disaster events, and simplify the engineering complexity associated with traditional data centers. In addition to that, this article explores one technical design for such a community data center and the business strategy for operating community data centers.
@article{arxiv.2501.16752,
title = {Consumer-Oriented Computing: A Path to Community Data Centers},
author = {Tianhao Zhang},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2501.16752},
year = {2025}
}