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Research Projects
ThermoStat Project (2005-2007)
Studying Temperature in Rack-mounted Servers
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Temperature-aware computing is becoming more important in the design
of computer systems as power densities are increasing and the
implications of high operating temperatures result in higher failure rates of
components and increased demand for cooling capability. Computer
architects and system software designers need to understand the
thermal consequences of their proposals and develop techniques for lowering
operating temperatures to reduce both transient and permanent component failures.
Until recently, tools for understanding the temperature ramifications of the
designs of the server and the rack have been mainly restricted to the
industry for studying packaging and cooling mechanisms and they have
been mainly concerned with the static thermal characteristics of computer
systems. Recognizing the need for such tools, there
has been recent work on modeling temperatures of processors
at the micro architectural level, which can
be easily understood and employed by computer architects for
processor designs. However, there is a dearth
of such tools in the academic/research community
for undertaking architectural/systems studies beyond a processor?a server
box, rack, or even a machine room.
In this project, we present a detailed three-dimensional Computational
Fluid Dynamics-based thermal modeling tool, called ThermoStat,
for rack-mounted server systems. We conduct several experiments with
this tool to show how different load conditions affect the
thermal profile and to also illustrate how this tool can
help design dynamic thermal management techniques.
We propose reactive and proactive thermal management for rack-mounted
server and isothermal workload distribution for rack.
(Papers: HPCA07, IEEE TC 2008)
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