High-efficiency server design

Large-scale data centers consume megawatts in power and cost hundreds of millions of dollars to equip. Reducing the energy and cost footprint of servers can therefore have substantial impact. Web, Grid, and cloud servers in particular can be hard to optimize, since they are expected to operate under a wide range of workloads. For our upcoming data center, we set out to significantly improve its power efficiency, cost, reliability, serviceability, and environmental footprint. To this end, we redesigned many dimensions of the data center and servers in conjunction. This paper focuses on our new server design, combining aspects of power, motherboard, thermal, and mechanical design. We calculate and confirm experimentally that our custom-designed servers can reduce power consumption across the entire load spectrum while at the same time lower acquisition and maintenance costs. Importantly, our design does not reduce the servers' performance or portability, which would otherwise limit its applicability.

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