What goes into a Edge / micro build
0–1 MW · typically: telco huts, retail edge, on-prem containers · 14 of 130 catalog parts apply.
Compute
- HBM — Content is fixed per accelerator package; total HBM demand scales with the number of accelerators deployed rather than with facility size or cooling design.
- DRAM — Quantity tracks node count and the memory-per-socket ratio a platform is designed around, not the facility's physical scale.
- Memory modules — Quantity tracks socket and channel count per server rather than site scale.
- Memory interface / buffer chips — Presence depends on module design — registered and load-reduced modules carry these chips, simpler unbuffered modules do not — so it tracks platform choice as much as facility scale.
- NAND flash — Quantity tracks the local storage footprint designed into each server, independent of facility scale or cooling approach.
- Enterprise SSDs & controllers — Drive count and capacity per node scale with local storage design rather than facility size; present from a single edge server up through the largest clusters.
Data
- HBM — Content is fixed per accelerator package; total HBM demand scales with the number of accelerators deployed rather than with facility size or cooling design.
- DRAM — Quantity tracks node count and the memory-per-socket ratio a platform is designed around, not the facility's physical scale.
- Memory modules — Quantity tracks socket and channel count per server rather than site scale.
- Memory interface / buffer chips — Presence depends on module design — registered and load-reduced modules carry these chips, simpler unbuffered modules do not — so it tracks platform choice as much as facility scale.
- NAND flash — Quantity tracks the local storage footprint designed into each server, independent of facility scale or cooling approach.
- Enterprise SSDs & controllers — Drive count and capacity per node scale with local storage design rather than facility size; present from a single edge server up through the largest clusters.
Shell & site
- Data center developers, operators & REITs — Present at every scale from a single edge cabinet to a multi-gigawatt campus; what changes is ownership structure — enterprise and edge sites are more often owned outright by the tenant, while hyperscale and larger sites increasingly involve a developer/REIT as landlord.
- Physical security & access — Present at nearly every scale; scope (number of mantraps, perimeter length, guard headcount) scales with site footprint and tenant compliance requirements rather than with compute density.
Upstream supply
- Copper — Present at every scale as wire and busbar; the cold-plate use is limited to liquid and hybrid deployments, while busbars, cable and transformer windings apply regardless of cooling approach.
- Aluminum — Structural and cabling uses scale with total footprint at every tier; the heat-sink role is most prominent in air-cooled and hybrid deployments and recedes on components that move to direct liquid cooling.
- Rare earths & permanent magnets — Present at every scale through fans, pumps and gensets; motor count and magnet draw per site rise with fan-wall and pump density in liquid-cooled hyperscale, campus and gigawatt-class builds.
- Specialty glass & glass fiber — Optical-fiber demand scales with network fabric density at every tier and is highest in hyperscale, campus and gigawatt-class clusters; the glass-core substrate use applies only to the largest chip packages, independent of site size.
- Industrial & specialty gases — The fab-supply use is independent of data-center site size, since it tracks wafer capacity rather than IT load; the fire-suppression use is present at every tier and scales with the number and size of protected spaces.
- Critical minerals: gallium, germanium, indium, tungsten, beryllium — These are chip- and component-level inputs rather than site infrastructure, so presence is uniform across site sizes; total draw scales with GPU, power-semiconductor and optics volume rather than with facility footprint.