Challenges of Data Center Thermal Management

The insatiable desire of consumers to want more and more performance from computer equipment has driven the powers of this equipment to levels that are putting a strain on the thermal management of data centers housing this equipment. Equipment powers have been rising steadily over the past 10 years at a rapid rate. When the industry switched from bipolar to CMOS back in the early 90's industry experts had thought that the low power CMOS technology would resolve all problems associated with power and heat. Little did they know that now the problems associated with the CMOS equipment has surpassed anything installed with the bipolar technologies 10 to 15 years ago. Data centers are being designed with 15 to 20 years life spans and customers we asking how to plan for the power and cooling within these data centers. This paper addresses some of the current issues with cooling of equipment in data centers and describes some of the on-going efforts to under the thermal environment. To set the stage far describing the data center thermal management issues the power trends from the microprocessor to the rack will be described.