A Multi-Scale Thermal Analysis Method for Data Centers with Application in a Ship Data Center

Thermal analysis of data centers is in urgent need to ensure that computer chips remain below the critical temperature while the energy consumption for cooling can be reduced. It is difficult to obtain detailed hotspot locations and temperatures of chips in large data centers containing hundreds of racks or more by direct measurement. In this paper, a multi-scale thermal analysis method is proposed that can predict the temperature distribution of chips and solder balls in data centers. The multi-scale model is divided into six scales: room, rack, server, Insulated-Gate Bipolar Transistor (IGBT), chip and solder ball. A concept of sub-model is proposed and the six levels are organized into four simulation sub-models. Sub-model 1 contains Room, Rack and Server (RRS); Sub-model 2 contains Server and IGBT (SI); Sub-model 3 contains IGBT and Chip (IC), and Sub-model 4 contains Chip and Solder-ball (CS). These four sub-models are one-way coupled by transmitting their results as boundary conditions between levels. The full-field simulation method is employed to verify the efficiency and accuracy of multi-scale simulation method for a single-rack data center. The two simulation results show that the highest temperature emerges in the same location. The Single-rack Full-field Model (SRFFM) costs 2.5 times more computational time than that with Single-rack Multi-scale Model (SRMSM). The deviation of the highest temperature of chips and solder balls are 1.57°C and 0.2°C between the two models which indicates that the multi-scale simulation method has good prospect in the data center thermal simulation. Finally, the multi-scale thermal analysis method is applied to a ship data center with 15 racks.