Re-thinking data center power delivery: Regulating series-connected voltage domains in software

McClurg, Josiah; Zhang, Yujia; Wheeler, Jeff; Pilawa-Podgurski, Robert C. N.

doi:10.1109/peci.2013.6506050

Cited by 17 publications

(5 citation statements)

References 14 publications

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“…However, 48 V rack distribution is discussed [22], and direct board 48 V power would eliminate one power conversion level in the chain. A more radical rack-level approach is to connect individual servers in series [49]- [51]. Because communications links are electrically isolated, alternative electrical connections can be supported.…”

Section: Rack Levelmentioning

confidence: 99%

Data Center Challenges and Their Power Electronics

Krein

2017

CPSS TPEA

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Abstract-Data centers use more than 1.5% of all electricity in China and the U.S., with continuing growth. This paper reviews the power hierarchy levels within modern data centers. It considers energy consumption and power electronics challenges across all levels of a data center, including building distribution, dc architectures, and conversion down to the board level. Power electronics plays a central role throughout the hierarchy, and emerging approaches are described. Strategies that enhance center energy efficiency, both in terms of overall center operation and in terms of computation performance, are discussed.Index Terms-Data centers, dc distribution, dc-dc converters, server racks, power utilization factor, dc power architecture, digital power.

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Section: Rack Levelmentioning

confidence: 99%

Data Center Challenges and Their Power Electronics

Krein

2017

CPSS TPEA

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“…Regulation of these voltage domains was initially accomplished through the use of linear regulators (with attendant power loss concerns), and only recently has switch-mode power electronics been applied to chip-level DPP [12]- [15]. Recently, the seriesstacked architecture has been proposed for data-center power delivery with promising results in a preliminary setup with software-only voltage management [16].…”

Section: A Previous Workmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Since this scenario results in a nonzero average current into the capacitor banks, the voltage at each node will drift apart. Thus, if the computational load of the servers are not intelligently managed as in [16], or if the computational load balancing software experiences a fault, the input voltages may drift outside their design limits and cause damage the servers.…”

Section: Reliability and Voltage Regulationmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The work of [16] demonstrated how individual server power consumption within a series-connected stack can successfully be managed through software scheduling techniques and suitably-sized charge buffers, alone. This work presents flexible converters which are not only designed to handle full server power in case of software failure, but also to minimize conversion loss during the "light load" condition where the server powers have been balanced to some extent through software.…”

Section: Reliability and Voltage Regulationmentioning

confidence: 99%

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A series-stacked architecture for high-efficiency data center power delivery

McClurg

Pilawa-Podgurski

Shenoy

2014

2014 IEEE Energy Conversion Congress and Exposition (ECCE)

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As the number and power density of servers within today's data centers continues to increase, efficient power delivery is becoming a major industry concern. This paper proposes a series-connected power distribution architecture for data center server clusters, which decouples conversion losses from the total power delivered -allowing for conversion losses to remain relatively fixed, even as server power requirements increase. Voltage regulation of the servers within the cluster is achieved by the use of differential power processing hardware. This work also provides an experimental comparison between the fully-operational series-connected cluster implementation and the best-in-class commercial power distribution hardware -showing more than a five times reduction in conversion losses. The measured system-level efficiency for a best-in-class conventional power delivery architecture was 97.5%, and the measured system efficiency of the proposed architecture was 99.5%.

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“…Fig. 2-17 shows two DPP application examples in PV panels [23], [141]- [143] and data centers [21], [58], [144].…”

Section: -2-3 Vertically Stacked Power Architectures (To Reduce Pout ...mentioning

confidence: 99%

Optimization of DC-DC Power Supply Systems by Differential and Hybrid Power Processing

Li¹

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Re-thinking data center power delivery: Regulating series-connected voltage domains in software

Cited by 17 publications

References 14 publications

Data Center Challenges and Their Power Electronics

Data Center Challenges and Their Power Electronics

A series-stacked architecture for high-efficiency data center power delivery

Optimization of DC-DC Power Supply Systems by Differential and Hybrid Power Processing

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