Reducing the temperature in the data center - new research of a number of companies
Silicon dioxide, diamond substitute and predictive predictive models
Reducing the temperature in a data center of any size is a vital task. But, unfortunately, its solution often requires a large amount of resources - energy, and therefore money. Yes, and the effectiveness of a number of cooling systems raises questions and the desire to find a more efficient method of cooling equipment.
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A large number of different companies and organizations, both private and public, are engaged in research in this area. According to the forecast of Global Market Insights (GMI), by 2023 the market volume of cooling systems for data centers will be more than $ 6 billion. New technologies that are emerging now may help owners of data centers to significantly reduce the cost of operating cooling systems. Of course, not all new items will be used, but some will definitely become the standard. Google Corporation, by the way, came out of the situation , using the developments of its division in the field of AI. No less interesting solutions are offered by other companies.
The Office of Naval Research (Office of Naval Research; ONR) of the US Department of Defense is now looking for diamond analogues for the heat lines of its data centers. A team of scientists from six different US universities is participating in the project. The main task is to search for a material equal in thermal conductivity to diamond. This indicator is the highest among all known solids - 20-24 W / cm.
It is clear that no one will use pure or even synthetic diamonds for the purpose of cooling equipment - this is too expensive. But if it were possible to find a substitute similar in parameters, then it would be possible to create heat pipelines with unique efficiency for data centers. One of the alleged substitutes, boron arsenide, is already being investigated. Its thermal conductivity is close to diamond, but the cost is much lower.
The main task now is to obtain high quality pure arsenide of boron, only in this case one can speak of high thermal conductivity.
A team of specialists from the Georgia Institute of Technology published the results of a study on the possibility of using ultra-small particles of silicon dioxide to create polymer coatings for electronic equipment cooling systems. This material has a high dielectric constant. Also, this material is able to increase the thermal conductivity of the surface by 10-20 times.
According to scientists, the cooling of a heated surface with such a coating occurs due to a special electromagnetic effect that occurs on the surface of the nanoparticles (the researchers call them "sand"). Due to its properties, the coating with the smallest particles of silicon dioxide provides a high level of thermal conductivity along with expensive polymeric materials commonly used to remove heat from equipment.
This company has developed a new type of material based on silicon, which has received the working title 804-24. According to the creators of the material, it is a homogeneous thermal paste with unique characteristics of heat transfer. Its advantage is that during heating, even to high temperatures, the paste does not release liquid or gas, and also does not interact in any way with the materials of electronic components.
As mentioned above, this material is based on silicon. The upper temperature limit for 804-24 is 200 ° C. The specific volume resistance is 2.0 * 1015 Ohm / cm. The dielectric density of the material is 450 volts /
mil
In addition to new types of materials, other technologies are used. So, Fujitsu offers high-precision technology to predict such important for the microclimate data center indicators as temperature and humidity. This technology reduces costs and increases overall cooling system efficiency.
The fact is that the air conditioning system takes up to half of all the electricity that the data center consumes. The Fujitsu system creates a predictive model of the load on the equipment, using an array of previously collected information. Due to this, it is possible to predict the growth of heat dissipation of the data center in a certain period of time, and increase the load on the cooling system. The rest of the time they can work with reduced power.
The system uses a number of sensors that transmit a large amount of information to the overall system. These are temperature, humidity, server equipment load level, fan speed, and much more. With the test of such a system in the data center for 1000 racks, where the cooling system took 22 million kWh of energy per year, the power consumption was reduced by
4.5 million kWh
The Danish company Asetek introduced a new liquid cooling system based on the RackCDU D2C platform. This is a specialized system that allows you to optimize the temperature regime of highly loaded systems. It is positioned as an opportunity to reduce the heating of a number of elements of super-power computing systems. Thanks to such a system in data centers, it is possible to increase the density of the placement of components within servers and computing nodes. According to the developers, this significantly reduces the cost of cooling.
In general, innovative cooling systems solve another problem - reducing the amount of water that is used by data centers. As you know, many data centers consume a huge amount of water, especially true for server farms of telecommunications giants. For example, last year, only Facebook used 836 million liters of water in its data centers. And water consumption of data centers is constantly growing. Of course, reducing the consumption of water resources by data centers cannot be solved suddenly and immediately, but over time this is quite possible.
Our other publications:
Reducing the temperature in a data center of any size is a vital task. But, unfortunately, its solution often requires a large amount of resources - energy, and therefore money. Yes, and the effectiveness of a number of cooling systems raises questions and the desire to find a more efficient method of cooling equipment.
')
A large number of different companies and organizations, both private and public, are engaged in research in this area. According to the forecast of Global Market Insights (GMI), by 2023 the market volume of cooling systems for data centers will be more than $ 6 billion. New technologies that are emerging now may help owners of data centers to significantly reduce the cost of operating cooling systems. Of course, not all new items will be used, but some will definitely become the standard. Google Corporation, by the way, came out of the situation , using the developments of its division in the field of AI. No less interesting solutions are offered by other companies.
US military looking for a substitute for diamond for heat pipes
The Office of Naval Research (Office of Naval Research; ONR) of the US Department of Defense is now looking for diamond analogues for the heat lines of its data centers. A team of scientists from six different US universities is participating in the project. The main task is to search for a material equal in thermal conductivity to diamond. This indicator is the highest among all known solids - 20-24 W / cm.
It is clear that no one will use pure or even synthetic diamonds for the purpose of cooling equipment - this is too expensive. But if it were possible to find a substitute similar in parameters, then it would be possible to create heat pipelines with unique efficiency for data centers. One of the alleged substitutes, boron arsenide, is already being investigated. Its thermal conductivity is close to diamond, but the cost is much lower.
The main task now is to obtain high quality pure arsenide of boron, only in this case one can speak of high thermal conductivity.
"Sand" in data centers
A team of specialists from the Georgia Institute of Technology published the results of a study on the possibility of using ultra-small particles of silicon dioxide to create polymer coatings for electronic equipment cooling systems. This material has a high dielectric constant. Also, this material is able to increase the thermal conductivity of the surface by 10-20 times.
According to scientists, the cooling of a heated surface with such a coating occurs due to a special electromagnetic effect that occurs on the surface of the nanoparticles (the researchers call them "sand"). Due to its properties, the coating with the smallest particles of silicon dioxide provides a high level of thermal conductivity along with expensive polymeric materials commonly used to remove heat from equipment.
Thermally conductive material from Noelle Industries
This company has developed a new type of material based on silicon, which has received the working title 804-24. According to the creators of the material, it is a homogeneous thermal paste with unique characteristics of heat transfer. Its advantage is that during heating, even to high temperatures, the paste does not release liquid or gas, and also does not interact in any way with the materials of electronic components.
As mentioned above, this material is based on silicon. The upper temperature limit for 804-24 is 200 ° C. The specific volume resistance is 2.0 * 1015 Ohm / cm. The dielectric density of the material is 450 volts /
mil
Fujitsu predictive modeling
In addition to new types of materials, other technologies are used. So, Fujitsu offers high-precision technology to predict such important for the microclimate data center indicators as temperature and humidity. This technology reduces costs and increases overall cooling system efficiency.
The fact is that the air conditioning system takes up to half of all the electricity that the data center consumes. The Fujitsu system creates a predictive model of the load on the equipment, using an array of previously collected information. Due to this, it is possible to predict the growth of heat dissipation of the data center in a certain period of time, and increase the load on the cooling system. The rest of the time they can work with reduced power.
The system uses a number of sensors that transmit a large amount of information to the overall system. These are temperature, humidity, server equipment load level, fan speed, and much more. With the test of such a system in the data center for 1000 racks, where the cooling system took 22 million kWh of energy per year, the power consumption was reduced by
4.5 million kWh
Systems of liquid cooling from Asetek
The Danish company Asetek introduced a new liquid cooling system based on the RackCDU D2C platform. This is a specialized system that allows you to optimize the temperature regime of highly loaded systems. It is positioned as an opportunity to reduce the heating of a number of elements of super-power computing systems. Thanks to such a system in data centers, it is possible to increase the density of the placement of components within servers and computing nodes. According to the developers, this significantly reduces the cost of cooling.
In general, innovative cooling systems solve another problem - reducing the amount of water that is used by data centers. As you know, many data centers consume a huge amount of water, especially true for server farms of telecommunications giants. For example, last year, only Facebook used 836 million liters of water in its data centers. And water consumption of data centers is constantly growing. Of course, reducing the consumption of water resources by data centers cannot be solved suddenly and immediately, but over time this is quite possible.
Our other publications:
- Artificial intelligence helped Google to reduce energy consumption of cooling systems in data centers by 40%
- How a failure in the data center can lead to the cancellation of thousands of flights of major airlines
- Accidents in data centers that were (almost) impossible to foresee
- Rating of programming languages in 2016
- How Facebook saved 75% of the energy required to store photos of cats and user selfie
Source: https://habr.com/ru/post/307904/
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