News Release from: Flomerics
Edited by the Electronicstalk Editorial Team on 25 April 2002
Thermal analysis gives green light to server
A thorough thermal analysis has given Egenera the confidence to commit to the design of its BladeFrame server, months before the technology would be available for testing.
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A thorough thermal analysis undertaken by Flomerics' design analysis consultancy Thermal Design Services has given Egenera the confidence to commit to incorporating a block of four high performance processors within the processing blade of its BladeFrame server, months before the technology would be available for testing. As demands increase on data centres, Egenera wanted to design a server solution with expanded performance, using fewer resources and at lower cost. Faced with creating a new system that could handle future thermal requirements, Egenera turned to Flomerics to evaluate concepts before the actual design of its processor unit was initiated.
Thus, Flotherm played a crucial role in helping Egenera meet its product design goals.
Egenera's BladeFrame product is the industry's first open, nonproprietary computing platform purpose-built to run business-critical applications.
The BladeFrame was designed to simplify server management and lower the total cost of ownership in the data centre.
Its processing blades contain only processors and memory but once configured, function like conventional servers.
This eliminates components that represent failure points and consume valuable board space.
Egenera packs four high performance server processors and 12 DIMMs (dual in-line memory modules) into a package typically holding one or two processors and four DIMMs.
This represented a significant increase in power dissipation at 660W.
The CPU case temperature limit was 79.8C, thus controlling the device temperatures was vital.
The final design uses three blowers to cool the small unit.
In the early concepts, airflow was bypassing the heat sinks and the DIMMs were overheating.
By evaluating many design options in Flotherm, Egenera was able to find a design to meet their requirements.
The two folded-fin heat sinks were moved, repositioned and resized to gain uniform airflow throughout.
Dan Busby, Director of Product Design, Egenera, explained, "Egenera needed to commit to delivering the highest advanced processor density months before the technology would be available for testing.
Partnering with Flomerics, Egenera used Flotherm to evaluate many thermal concepts with varying component topologies, air mover types and baffling schemes.
These evaluations became the basis for our overall thermal design and enabled us to develop our product with the confidence that our thermal system would work.
Those results have proved to be correct.
Subsequent product qualification verified that the simulations were highly accurate".
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