Delivering an Open Data Center Ecosystem for AI

Driving Innovations from Chip to Grid Across Hyperscale and Local Data Centers

BARCELONA, Spain, April 29, 2026 /PRNewswire/ -- The Open Compute Project Foundation (OCP), the nonprofit international organization bringing at-scale innovations and hyperscale best practices to all, today announced newly approved OCP contributions, new projects, and recently formed alliances to deliver on its Open Data Center Ecosystem for AI vision announced in October of 2025 covering IT as well as physical data center infrastructure and facilities.

The newly approved OCP contributions include (1) a roadmap for open data center facilities for AI, Next Generation ML Infrastructure Design Principles, (2) an overview of proposed direct current power distribution architectures Data Center Facility - Low Voltage DC Power Distribution, (3) guidelines for safe design, operation, and maintenance of energy storage systems  Requirements for Energy Storage Systems used in Data Centers, (4) new methods for gathering telemetry to enable data center real time IT and OT management Third Party Integration, Telemetry & APIs, (5) using Ethernet for AI scale-up networking  ESUN - Network Operator Requirements, (6) a major expansion to the Open Rack ecosystem for AI with the Open Rack Wide (ORW) specification (7) new reference architectures for building AI Clusters Open Cluster Designs for AI White Paper, Open POD Group for M xPUs, and Open Cluster of N xPUs, and (8) developing open chiplet ecosystems with the Foundation Chiplet System Architecture.

"These OCP approved contributions address critical problems for AI data centers, several of which were highlighted in an open letter call for collaboration initiated by Google, Meta, and Microsoft last October. The OCP Community, OCP Foundation Team, and the OCP Board of Directors have been hard at work to overcome the challenges from chip to grid of deploying AI Clusters at scale. With no end in sight to the very large AI data center buildout, the collaborations and innovation standardizations within the OCP Community are more important than ever," said George Tchaparian, CEO at OCP.

To continue the collaborative work, recently launched projects and workstreams covering significant challenges still to be solved: (1) AI DC facilities: Open Data Center for AI and Data Center Facilities Power Distribution, (2) AI Clusters Connectivity: with Ethernet for Scale-Up Networking (ESUN), Scale-Up Ethernet Transport (SUE-T) and Optics Reliability, and (3) addressing the next wave of AI Inference: with the AI Computing Continuum.

Open Data Center for AI is focused on solving the most pressing challenges facing the deployment of at-scale AI data center facility infrastructure and operational technology (OT). This includes open data center reference designs, energy and grid solutions, telemetry and management solutions, and power estimation methodologies.

DCF Power Distribution aims to increase power density to enable next generation compute by enhancing energy efficiency and streamline power distribution, including the transition to Low Voltage Direct Current - LVDC (≤1500VDC) distribution architectures for the data center.

Scale-up Networking and Optics Reliability aims to advance Ethernet for scale-up domains in AI systems, re-examining how traffic is sent out across the network switches, including protocol headers, error handling, and lossless data transfer. Improving optics reliability with interoperability becomes critical because even a small failure rate across massive fabrics can cascade into significant interruptions, wasted accelerator hours, and degraded overall system utilization.

AI Computing Continuum aims to accelerate the adoption of scalable, interoperable, and sustainable AI systems beyond traditional hyperscale data centers by defining open, modular infrastructure standards that work across diverse hyperscale adjacent environments—including regional colocation, enterprise on premises, telco points of presence, and industrial sites.

We've also formed new alliances adding new dimensions to OCP's ecosystem with (1) the Electric Power Research Institute (EPRI)  and (2) the IOWN Global Forum.

EPRI and OCP aim to accelerate digital innovation and further develop the potential of data centers to serve as flexible resources for the power system.

Current/OS and OCP focused on data center power technology standards and best practices. The alliance between the two organizations will fuse OCP's expertise in open data center hardware with Current/OS's open standards for safe, interoperable direct current microgrids. This alliance aims to accelerate the shift from traditional AC-based power to efficient hybrid AC/DC or fully DC-native data center infrastructure.

IOWN Global Forum and OCP are working to deliver a seamless computational infrastructure from centralized to edge deployments. IOWN Global Forum and OCP will work together to develop a roadmap for a multi-site, high-bandwidth, low-latency compute and network infrastructure.

"The need for extreme integration and co-design when designing AI clusters has become an imperative in the push to have a significant performance increment in generation over generation infrastructure. The move by the OCP Foundation to expand its Community footprint to cover from chip to grid is in perfect sync with the market and an important focus to deliver innovations needed for next generation AI data centers," said Ashish Nadkarni, GVP/GM, Worldwide Enterprise Infrastructure at IDC.

About OCP

The Open Compute Project (OCP) brings at-scale innovations and hyperscaler best practices to all, spanning technology domains from the data center to the edge, and the technology stack from silicon, to systems, to site facilities and services. The international OCP Community is made up of organizations and people from hyperscale, neocloud and cloud data center operators, communications providers, colocation providers, diverse enterprises, and technology providers. With The OCP Tenets of Openness, Impact, Efficiency, Scale and Sustainability, the OCP Foundation engages with industry ecosystems, our growing membership, and educates thousands of engineers and industry leaders, every year. Across many projects and initiatives, the OCP Foundation and its Community are meeting the AI Data Center market evolution today and shaping the future. Learn more at: www.opencompute.org.

Media Contact
Dirk Van Slyke
Open Compute Project Foundation
dirkv@opencompute.org

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