Crossing the length scale divide to address thermal challenges for sustainable data centers

Data center cooling infrastructure is rapidly evolving along two distinct directions. A burgeoning array of cloud based computing services includes internet searches, e-commerce, package tracking, e-mail, video streaming, and social networking. Additionally, a smaller user base is focused on high performance computing applications, such as weather predictions, financial algorithms and transactions, and numerically intensive scientific and engineering simulations. For each application type, infrastructure within data center enclosures includes rack housed servers, power conditioning equipment, computer room air-conditioning units, and switching and routing equipment. To maintain the lowest capital and operating costs, such facilities are undertaking a number of steps towards energy usage reductions to improve the power usage effectiveness (PUE).