TIA Will Publish AI-Focused Addendum to 942 Data Center Standard

The Telecommunications Industry Association (TIA) has begun the official process of publishing an addendum to the ANSI/TIA-942-C data center standard that will focus on artificial intelligence (AI) computing. The TIA officially issued a call for interest on this project on February 26.

In its call for interest, the TIA said the initial title for the addendum TIA-942-C-1 is “Telecommunications Infrastructure Standard for Data Centers – Addendum 1: Artificial Intelligence.”

“The purpose of this addendum to ANSI/TIA-942-C is to provide updates to TIA-942-C to accommodate artificial intelligence (AI) computing,” the TIA further stated.

The call for interest served as an official invitation for participation in this project. The TIA added, “Stakeholders may include, but are not limited to: cabling system designers, installers, consultants, architects, manufacturers, cabling system owners, facilities management organizations, contractors.”

Individuals interested in participating in this or any TIA standards development activity can learn more by email the association’s membership department at [email protected].

The TIA’s move forward with this project comes at a time when the international cabling-standards development organization International Organization for Standardization (ISO) already has begun working on an amendment to the standard ISO/IEC 11801-5 Generic Cabling for Customer Premises: Data Centres. That amendment has been drafted and edits to its first draft are underway. The group responsible for the amendment to ISO/IEC 11801-5, ISO/MEC JTC 1 SC 25 WG 3, will meet later in March to discuss proposed edits to the first draft.

TIA’s TR-42.1 Engineering Committee on Premises Telecommunications Infrastructure will review a first draft of TIA-942-C-1 in June.

Often, when the TIA and the ISO/IEC both seek to publish documents (e.g. standards, addenda/amendments) addressing similar topics, one organization will be further along in the process than the other organization, by multiple steps. This allows the “trailing” organization to maintain harmony between the two documents by incorporating information from the “leading” organization’s work, where appropriate. In this case, the TIA and the ISO/IEC will be working essentially in parallel, presenting a more-challenging-than-typical assignment to keep the two documents in harmony.

While ISO/IEC 11801-5 Amendment 1 will focus exclusively on cabling considerations related to AI compute, TIA-942-C-1 will include information on cooling and electrical systems in addition to detailed cabling considerations.

We will follow developments within TIA TR-42.1, as well as ISO/MEC JTC 1 SC 25 WG 3, as these two standard documents follow their respective paths toward publication.