Top Page | English | 简体中文 | 繁體中文 | 한국어 | 日本語
Wednesday, 29 June 2016, 20:01 HKT/SGT
Share:
    

Source: Fujitsu Ltd
Fujitsu Develops Energy-Saving Technology to Cool Data Centers
Highly accurate predictive technology cuts air-conditioner electricity use by 20%

KAWASAKI, Japan, June 29, 2016 - (JCN Newswire) - Fujitsu Laboratories Ltd. today announced the development of highly accurate predictive technology for such metrics as temperature and humidity, enabling energy-saving operations of air-conditioning equipment in data centers.

Figure 1: Model-based air-conditioner control system

Figure 2: Dynamic status changes within data centers

Figure 3: Summary of the JIT modeling used

Figure 4: Summary of the newly developed technology

With the aim of preventing global warming, there is a demand for energy-saving in data centers, particularly with air-conditioning equipment, which can account for between 30% and 50% of total electricity use. Now, to flexibly respond to the dynamic status changes that are issues unique to data centers, such as moving information equipment in and out and changing rack arrangements, Fujitsu Laboratories has developed a highly accurate prediction technology that sequentially builds a model that predicts air-conditioning effects from collected data, enabling reductions in air conditioner energy use.

With this technology, Fujitsu Laboratories has enabled reductions in data center electricity consumption, contributing to global warming prevention.

Details of this technology will be announced at the European Control Conference (ECC) 2016, an international conference which will be held June 29th in Aalborg, Denmark.

Development Background

Currently, data center energy consumption is increasing along with growth in the data center market, and reports state that data center energy consumption accounts for 1-2% of all electricity use. Further increases in data center energy use are expected with the growth of IoT systems going forward. Reducing data center energy use may also be an important element in global warming prevention.

Issues

In order to reduce data center energy use, it is both important and effective to reduce the energy consumed by air-conditioning equipment, which accounts for between 30% and 50% of a data center's total energy use. Existing data center air-conditioning equipment operates on the basis of information from a variety of installed sensors so as to maintain the target temperature and humidity even when the operating rate of the ICT equipment it contains, such as servers, increases. When sensor data exceeds a set value, the system carries out rapid cooling for safety reasons, which causes air-conditioning to operate excessively.

In contrast, by using a method called model-based control (Figure 1), which is used in blast furnaces, automobiles, and robotics to predict future values, reductions in air-conditioning energy consumption in line with less excessive operations can be expected. However, the devices installed in the data center, such as information devices and air-conditioning equipment, as well as their layout, can change frequently (Figure 2). This means that the model, once built, will diverge from reality over time, reducing prediction accuracy and making it difficult to use in data centers.

About the Technology

In order to use model-based control in data centers, Fujitsu Laboratories applied Just in Time (JIT) modeling (Figure 3), which can build a model in response to a situation. With existing JIT modeling, useful information is selected from sensor data, including temperature and humidity, through mathematical processing, and this data is used to create a predictive model and calculate predicted values. With the sensor data alone, however, this method does not select enough useful information to immediately reflect the status of dynamic changes in the data center, making highly accurate predictions difficult. This new technology now creates a database that incorporates the status of air-conditioning equipment, including the utilization rate of machines and fan speed, and has a requirement to not only select useful information against prediction targets, but also to automatically select at least one variable from the air-conditioning equipment status database. By creating a highly accurate predictive model using the selected variables (Figure 4), this technology succeeds in improving predictive accuracy. Fujitsu Laboratories has thus created a highly accurate predictive technology that can respond to the frequent changes in the state of a data center by building sequential models.

Effects

With regard to this newly developed technology, Fujitsu Laboratories conducted a simulation using actual 100-rack scale data, and confirmed it was possible to predict the temperature of servers' air supply with high accuracy, within an average margin of +/- 0.17degC and maximum +/- 2.1degC, even in a frequently changing environment. Fujitsu Laboratories applied these results to simulated conditions for a 1,000-rack data center with servers that would consume about 70 million kWh/year, and air-conditioning that would use 22 million kWh/year, and calculated that, with the application of this technology, such a data center could expect to save 4.5 million kWh in electricity consumption, a reduction of about 20%. With this technology, Fujitsu Laboratories is improving energy saving at data centers, where electricity usage is expected to grow, contributing to preventing the warming of the planet's environment.

Future Plans

Fujitsu Laboratories will be conducting field trials of this technology throughout fiscal 2016 at data centers operated by Fujitsu Limited, after which it is scheduled to be put into actual operation in fiscal 2017, and incorporated into Fujitsu's operations management infrastructure software "FUJITSU Software ServerView Infrastructure Manager."

About Fujitsu Laboratories

Founded in 1968 as a wholly owned subsidiary of Fujitsu Limited, Fujitsu Laboratories Ltd. is one of the premier research centers in the world. With a global network of laboratories in Japan, China, the United States and Europe, the organization conducts a wide range of basic and applied research in the areas of Next-generation Services, Computer Servers, Networks, Electronic Devices and Advanced Materials. For more information, please see: http://www.fujitsu.com/jp/group/labs/en/.


Contact:
Fujitsu Limited
Public and Investor Relations
Tel: +81-3-3215-5259
URL: www.fujitsu.com/global/news/contacts/

Fujitsu Laboratories Ltd.
ICT Systems Laboratories 
Server Technologies Lab
E-mail: Retimer_ISSCC2015@ml.labs.fujitsu.com


Topic: Press release summary
Source: Fujitsu Ltd

Sectors: Cloud & Enterprise, IT Individual
http://www.acnnewswire.com
From the Asia Corporate News Network


Copyright © 2024 ACN Newswire. All rights reserved. A division of Asia Corporate News Network.


Fujitsu Ltd Links

http://www.fujitsu.com

https://plus.google.com/+Fujitsu

https://www.facebook.com/FujitsuJapan

https://twitter.com/Fujitsu_Global

https://www.youtube.com/user/FujitsuOfficial

https://www.linkedin.com/company/fujitsu/

Fujitsu Ltd
Dec 23, 2024 12:30 HKT/SGT
Fujitsu drives chemical industry logistics DX with participation in joint logistics demonstration
Dec 16, 2024 09:20 HKT/SGT
Fujitsu recognized as Leader in IDC MarketScape: Worldwide Digital Workplace Services 2024 Vendor Assessment
Dec 12, 2024 10:06 HKT/SGT
Fujitsu develops video analytics AI agent to support safe, secure, and efficient frontline workplaces
Dec 12, 2024 09:28 HKT/SGT
Fujitsu develops world's first multi-AI agent security technology to protect against vulnerabilities and new threats
Dec 11, 2024 15:36 HKT/SGT
Fujitsu concludes share transfer agreement concerning Fujitsu Communication Services Limited
Dec 11, 2024 09:11 HKT/SGT
Combating customer harassment: Fujitsu, Toyo University and Kokoro Balance Research Institute launch field trial on AI-powered training program
Dec 10, 2024 10:38 HKT/SGT
Fujitsu drives business process improvement at Mitsubishi Electric Engineering using SAP Signavio(R)
Dec 3, 2024 09:48 HKT/SGT
Fujitsu entrepreneurship program spins out first start-up company
Dec 2, 2024 21:07 HKT/SGT
Fujitsu expands global strategic collaboration agreement with AWS to promote customer digital transformation across industries
Nov 26, 2024 09:51 HKT/SGT
Fujitsu develops Policy Twin, a new digital twin technology to maximize effectiveness of local government policies for solving societal issues
More news >>
 News Alerts
Copyright © 2024 ACN Newswire - Asia Corporate News Network
Home | About us | Services | Partners | Events | Login | Contact us | Privacy Policy | Terms of Use | RSS
US: +1 214 890 4418 | China: +86 181 2376 3721 | Hong Kong: +852 8192 4922 | Singapore: +65 6549 7068 | Tokyo: +81 3 6859 8575

Connect With us: