GLOBAL CHALLENGES

Six Reasons Data Centers Need China

R. Colin Johnson | Date: 11-10-10 | Comments

Business-savvy Chinese manufacturers are capitalizing on their virtual monopoly on key raw materials for hard disks, optical fibers and even semiconductor microchips. If the monopoly cannot be broken soon, data centers will have no choice but to buy the following six key storage, networking and processing components from Chinese manufacturers.

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Six Reasons Data Centers Need China
China now controls nearly 97 percent of the rare earth materials, which it is increasingly supplying only to Chinese manufacturers. The United States, Australia, Canada, Africa, Malaysia and Vietnam are quickly opening mines, but alternative supplies will not supplant China's monopoly for a decade. As rare earths become increasingly scarce outside China, data centers will find that these six key components will increasingly only be available with the imprint "Made in China."

Rare earth production was dominated by the U.S. mine in Mountain Pass, Calif., from 1965 to 1984, when the Chinese began production, subsequently driving other mines out of business by underpricing them (source: U.S. Geological Survey).

Fiber Optic Cabling

Optical fibers use rare earths as dopants to improve performance. In particular, erbium-doped fibers act as optical amplifiers in "repeaters" to boost the signal between long-haul drops. Instead of translating the optical signal into an electrical signal, boosting it and then re-emitting it with a laser, such doped fibers can merely be spliced into a short section of normal fiber to provide optical amplification. There is currently no known substitute for erbium-doped fibers, and China is the only supplier of erbium.

Lasers to Capacitors

Many optical and electrical components�from communications lasers to tantalium capacitors�use rare earth dopants. Neodymium and ytterbium, for instance, are used to dope solid-state lasers to boost their power output in the infrared spectrum used for communications. As rare earths become increasingly scarce outside China, IT managers will be left with the no choice but to buy Chinese.

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