The Computational Research and Theory Facility: Pushing
the Envelope of Data Center Energy Efficiency
Steve Greenberg, Lawrence Berkeley
National Laboratory
Currently in design, the Computational Research and Theory Facility
(CRTF) is scheduled to be operational in 2012. The building will
be owned by the University of California and will house the National
Energy Research Supercomputing Center (NERSC) of the Lawrence Berkeley
National Laboratory. NERSC operates some of the world's most powerful
unclassified supercomputers and hosts users from around the world
working on problems like climate modeling that require high performance
scientific computer systems.
With a construction budget of $90 million, the CRTF will be a building
of 140,000 gross square feet, including 32,000 assignable square
feet of high-performance computer center floor, plus offices and
support areas. The initial electrical power requirement will be
7.5 megawatts (MW), expandable to 17MW. Approximately 300 staff will occupy the
center and associated office space.
The CRTF has a goal of a minimum Data Center Infrastructure Efficiency
(DCIE) of 0.83, which would be better than any data center benchmarked
to date. In addition to achieving this energy performance, the building
must maintain the flexibility needed to house numerous generations
of supercomputing systems over the next few decades that have unknown
power and cooling needs. It is intended to take full advantage of
the information technology (IT) equipment manufacturers' temperature and humidity limits,
as well as Berkeley's mild climate and minimal requirements for
Uninterruptible Power Supply (UPS) backup. The facility is planning
to include:
- Air-side economizer
- Water-side economizer, possibly with two-stage cooling towers
- Low pressure-drop air-side design
- Isolation of cold and/or hot air flows on the equipment floor
- Dividable above and under-floor space to allow different environmental
conditions for different computing systems
- Direct evaporative cooling for humidification
- Two-temperature cooling water distribution
- Heat recovery to heat office areas within the building as well
as nearby
laboratory buildings
- Low-loss electrical distribution, including 480VAC distribution
to racks and
flywheel-based UPS systems
- Modularity of the air and water-based systems to ensure maximum
flexibility in the future while controlling first costs
The features and details will evolve as the design progresses;
the presentation will be on the most current design at the time.
Biography:
Steve Greenberg is an
energy management engineer at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory.
He has been working in the area of energy efficiency in buildings
for 28 years and data centers for over 10. A member of both LBNL's
high-tech buildings research team and its facilities group, he has
worked on studying and applying energy efficiency in a wide range
of server rooms from 20 kW to 16MW of IT load.
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