An Advanced Power and Thermal Optimized High Density Rack Solution for Data Center Energy Efficiency

Higher computing capability, higher density and better energy efficiency have always been the goal of data centers. Cross different factors, IT equipment, specifically as server is playing the crucial role in a data center development. CPU/GPU and other hardware ingredients’ computing capability keeps growth with innovated architecture and procedure upgrade, while comes along with increasing server power consumption as well as challenge for energy efficiency. Compared with conventional server system with dedicated fans and power supply units, design optimizations from rack level has been leading evolution to help data center to achieve those goals.This paper introduces an advanced rack scale power and thermal solution pilot deployed in Baidu new self-build data center. With the design, total rack power capacity is up to 36KW, which brings significant improvement for node density. Moreover,48V power distribution is implemented for better rack power efficiency, and centralized power shelf design with dual-input power source halves total PSU quantity for rack space saving and node density increase. Thermal solution is addressed from rack level as well, centralized fan wall provides air flow for whole rack, and thermosyphon heatsink is implemented in each node from higher heat dissipate efficiency perspective. With all the advanced technology integrated and optimized together, detailed energy efficiency contribution to Total Cost Ownership (TCO) is summarized and compared with conventional rack design and shows the advantages for data center energy efficiency.