Computational Fluid Dynamics Modeling of High Compute Density Data Centers to Assure System Inlet Air Specifications

High power dissipation from microprocessors, support chips, memory chips and mass storage has resulted in large overall power dissipation from computer systems. The deployment of these computer systems in large numbers and in very dense configurations in a data center has resulted in very high power densities at room level. These computer systems are deployed in a rack. A standard 2-meter high rack can accommodate an equivalent of 40 thin desktop systems. If the maximum power dissipation from each system is 300W, a single rack in a data center can be assumed to dissipate 12 KW. A data center can have hundreds of these 12 KW racks. Due to such high heat loads, designing the air conditioning system in a data center using simple energy balance is no longer adequate. Moreover, the data center design cannot rely on intuitive design of air distribution. It is necessary to model the air flow and temperature distribution in a data center. In this paper, a computational fluid dynamics model of a prototype data center is presented to make the case for such modeling. The model is compared with experimental results from the prototype data center.