CSR: Small: Cross-Layer Design of Power Delivery and Load Balancing for Green Data Centers

CSR：小型：绿色数据中心的电力传输和负载平衡的跨层设计

• 批准号: 1528029
• 负责人: Robert Pilawa-Podgurski
• 金额: $ 49.87万
• 依托单位: University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Standard Grant
• 财政年份: 2015
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2015-09-01 至 2018-07-31
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=1528029&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: CSR; Small; Cross; Layer; Design

As ever more computing is moved to the cloud, the energy consumption of data centers becomes increasingly important, both from an environmental and cost viewpoint. As a result, there is an increasing trend towards reducing the energy and carbon foot- print of data centers. While there has been considerable efforts to reduce the energy consumption, relatively little attention has been paid towards the power delivery in data centers. The objective of this work is to reduce the high voltage conversion losses (currently contributing 10-15% power loss) to almost zero by designing a joint software and hardware power delivery architecture specifically for a multi-server environment. This research, which could lead to drastic reduction of power conversion losses in data centers, has far-reaching impact on the design of sustainable and green data centers. Participation of underrepresented groups is encouraged, and portions of the research is incorporated into cloud computing courses, as hardware projects into a laboratory power electronics course, and as a case study of data center power delivery in an advanced graduate level power electronics course. An interactive online power usage portal, that visualizes in real-time the power usage of each individual server in the test-cluster provides opportunities for public interaction with the research. These open-source software and hardware demonstrations enable practitioners from around the world to learn more about sustainable computing. This research explores a cross-layer design approach to data centers, where the power delivery architecture and software load balancing algorithms work together to achieve the highest possible power delivery efficiency. The research explores electrically series-connected racks of servers, to minimize overall power conversion and attendant losses. A key challenge in series voltage stacking is the variation in input voltage of each server due to imbalance of computational load in a series-stack. In this research, the challenge is addressed both in hardware and software. In software, scalable load balancing algorithms that ensure uniform power consumption in each server in the rack are developed. The load balancing algorithms simultaneously optimize for response time and power loss. Moreover, hardware power converters and distributed energy storage (e.g., capacitors, batteries) provide filtering and power balance in cases when software alone does not suffice. A key question being addressed is the suitable size of energy storage, and the required control bandwidth of the power converters to ensure proper operation for realistic workloads. In addition, high speed sensing and communication of electrical measurements of voltage and currents are employed in combination with operation of servers at asymmetric input voltages for static power consumption mismatch mitigation. The load balancing algorithms is tested with two types of workloads: (1) Interactive web workloads with short turnaround time and homogeneous servers; and (2) Map-reduce type workloads with long turnaround time and servers with data locality constraint.

随着越来越多的计算转移到云端，从环境和成本的角度来看，数据中心的能源消耗变得越来越重要。 因此，减少数据中心的能源和碳足迹的趋势日益明显。尽管人们在降低能耗方面做出了巨大努力，但对数据中心电力输送的关注却相对较少。这项工作的目标是通过设计专门针对多服务器环境的联合软件和硬件电力传输架构，将高压转换损耗（目前占 10-15% 的功率损耗）降低到几乎为零。 这项研究可能会大幅减少数据中心的电力转换损耗，对可持续和绿色数据中心的设计产生深远的影响。鼓励代表性不足的群体参与，部分研究被纳入云计算课程，作为硬件项目纳入实验室电力电子课程，并作为高级研究生水平电力电子课程中数据中心电力传输的案例研究。交互式在线用电门户可以实时可视化测试集群中每台服务器的用电情况，为公众与研究互动提供了机会。这些开源软件和硬件演示使来自世界各地的从业者能够更多地了解可持续计算。这项研究探索了数据中心的跨层设计方法，其中电力传输架构和软件负载平衡算法协同工作，以实现尽可能高的电力传输效率。该研究探索了电气串联服务器机架，以最大限度地减少整体电力转换和随之而来的损失。串联电压堆叠的一个关键挑战是由于串联堆叠中计算负载的不平衡而导致每个服务器的输入电压发生变化。在这项研究中，我们从硬件和软件两个方面解决了这一挑战。在软件方面，开发了可扩展的负载平衡算法，以确保机架中每台服务器的功耗一致。负载平衡算法同时优化响应时间和功率损耗。此外，硬件电源转换器和分布式能量存储（例如电容器、电池）在仅软件无法满足需求的情况下提供滤波和功率平衡。需要解决的一个关键问题是能量存储的合适规模以及电源转换器所需的控制带宽，以确保实际工作负载的正常运行。此外，电压和电流的电气测量的高速感测和通信与服务器在不对称输入电压下的操作相结合，以减轻静态功耗失配。 负载平衡算法使用两种类型的工作负载进行测试：（1）周转时间短且同质服务器的交互式 Web 工作负载； (2)具有长周转时间和具有数据局部性约束的服务器的Map-reduce类型工作负载。