FEATURE : DATA CENTERS
each contain many tens of thousands of IT devices and require more than 100 megawatts ( MW ) of power capacity – enough to power around 80,000 US households ( U . S . DOE 2020 ).
With this immense power consumption demand comes the challenge of managing power distribution on a more granular level . Off-the-shelf and semi-custom solutions for remote access , power and white space infrastructure satisfy the needs of most enterprise and SMB data center applications . More expansive and complex data centers often use similar solutions . However , the need for ongoing improvements in efficiency and sustainability leads many HPC installations , AI applications , hyperscale data centers and telecom operators to seek novel custom solutions to layout , power density , cooling and connectivity .
BIO
Marc Cram is Director of New Market Development for
Legrand ’ s Data , Power and Control Division , which includes the Raritan and Server Technology brands . A technology evangelist , he is driven by a passion to deliver a positive power experience for the data center owner / operator . He earned a bachelor ’ s degree in electrical engineering from Rice University and has more than 30 years of experience in the field of electronics .
It ’ s a safe assumption that each software workload has its unique power consumption requirements . If form follows function , then the application drives architectural choices for hardware and its environment . Hyperscalers provide a roadmap for adding more space and more racks for more servers when we think we ’ ve reached , or are about to hit , our power consumption caps . But supercomputing wants everything physically close together to maximize throughput , while AI wants to be on specialized processors , and by its very nature , Edge Computing is inherently distributed .
MareNostrum is the central supercomputer at Barcelona Supercomputing Centre . Its generalpurpose block has 48 racks with 3,456 nodes . Each node has two Intel Xeon Platinum chips , each with 24 processors , amounting to 165,888 processors and a main memory of 390 terabytes . All this is sitting in the Chapel Torre Girona , built in the 1920s . As one can imagine , placing the data center without disturbing the chapel ’ s structure is an ultimate challenge of making the most with existing conditions .
The space dedicated to processing and CRACs ( computer room air conditioners ) leaves little room for distributing power going into the units . A situation like this has potential challenges for the deployment of PDUs , necessitating a customized solution :
• There is possibly little or no room at the back of the rack for a zero-u PDU , indicating it might have to sit in racks ’ sides .
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