Emerging technologies like IoT, AI, 5G and so on is rapidly raising the number of connected devices. Especially machine to machine communication is being the fasting growing trend and it is expected to be responsible for more than half of the communication in a close future. Day by day, more and more data is being created and processed. We are at a stage where we basically produce more data than we can handle. Moreover, emerging technologies require more bandwidth and low latency that cloud systems cannot handle this data or provide that low latency. Therefore, we needed a new approach to manage our gradually growing data. Edge computing has been created to answer this demand. We expect a raised demand for edge computing systems which is a distributed computing paradigm which brings compute and data storage closer to the end-users to improve response times and save bandwidth.
However, a globally distributed computing paradigm comes with its own challenges. Especially external thermodynamical conditions are directly affecting cooling systems’ performance of data centres, which is responsible of 40% of the energy consumption. Therefore, additional research and development effort is required to be taken for data centre cooling systems to be able to reach EU Green Deal’s climate nature ICT ecosystem goal until 2030.
Artificial-Intelligence-Augmented Cooling System for Small Data Centres “ECO-Qube”; is a holistic management system which aims to enhance energy efficiency and cooling performance by orchestrating both hardware and software components in edge computing applications.
ECO-Qube is a data driven approach which utilizes valuable unused data from active data centre components. Created big data is being used by an artificial intelligence augmented system which detects cooling and energy requirements instantaneously.
ECO-Qube differentiates from conventional cooling systems which keep operating temperatures within a strict interval and do not evaluate measurable cooling performance. Unmeasured cooling performance leads underperformed airflow, thermal disequilibrium, and high energy consumption. On the contrary, ECO-Qube offers a zonal heat management system which benefits from Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) simulations to adapt cooling system for the best airflow and cooling performance with minimum energy consumption. Moreover, ECO-Qube realizes smart workload orchestration to keep the CPUs at their most energy efficient state and maintain the thermal equilibrium to reduce overheating risk.
Sustainability is another priority for ECO-Qube’s smart energy management system (EMS), which is designed to track the energy demand and operate the energy supply in cooperation with building/district’s EMS. This synergy maximizes the energy supplied from renewable energy sources and minimizes the energy supplied from sources with big carbon footprint.
ECO-Qube solution will be assessed in three different pilots from different climatic conditions to validate energy efficiency under different external variables.
ECO-Qube is a green value proposition for data centre operators, system integrators, telecommunication companies, smart factories, IoT ecosystem developers to deploy their edge nodes in parallel with EU Green Deal priorities.
ECO-Qube consists of 11 partners:
- LANDE ENDUSTRIYEL METAL URUNLER SANAYI VE TICARET AS (Turkey): Lande is an ICT ecosystem solution provider specialized in rack cabinets and enclosures, PDUs, environmental monitoring systems, remote control systems, precision cooling systems and a wide range of further products for ICT sector.
- TASARIM SIMULASYON TEKNOLOJILERI SANAYI VE TICARET AS (Turkey): D&S Tech is specialized in open-source computational fluid dynamics applications. It is responsible for enhancing cooling performance and zonal heat management system for data centres.
- R2M SOLUTION SPAIN SL (Spain): R2M is a company specialized in research to market applications. It is responsible for preparing roadmaps for the commercialization of project outputs, researching intellectual and industrial property rights and developing future cooperation agreements within the consortium.
- SUSTAINABLE DIGITAL INFRASTRUCTURE ALLIANCE EV (Germany): SDIA is a non-governmental organization whose mission is to develop sustainable digital infrastructures. SDIA is responsible for the dissemination and communication management processes while also managing the project website and social media accounts.
- ENDOKS ENEJI DAGITIM SISTEMLERI SANAYI IMPORT AND EXPORT LIMITED SIRKETI (Turkey): Endoks’ main expertise is on the development of energy management systems. Endoks is responsible for the integration and communication of data centres with building/districts’ energy management systems. In the project, Endoks makes more use of sustainable energy sources and supports increasing energy efficiency.
- HELIO AG (Switzerland): A company specializing in virtualization and security in data centres. Helio is responsible for the establishment of the artificial intelligence supported virtualization and management system.
- LULEA TEKNISKA UNIVERSITET (Sweden): LTU is the academic responsible for the ECO-Qube project. He has academic studies on energy efficiency and waste heat evaluation in data centres. He is responsible for the publications and outputs to be created within the scope of the project.
- STICHTING GREEN IT CONSORTIUM REGIO AMSTERDAM (Netherlands): GITA is a non-governmental organization founded on the development of environmentally friendly and sustainable information and communication technologies. GITA is responsible for the pilot data centre implementation, evaluation and reporting for the project.
- EIDGENOSSISCHE MATERIALPRUFUNGS- UND FORSCHUNGSANSTALT (Switzerland): Pilot data center. EMPA is one of the most advanced micro-grids in Europe. It will support the implementation of integration of edge computing clusters into building and district energy systems. Waste heat recovery and alternative energy sources integration approaches are application areas.
- BITNET BİLISIM HİZMETLERI LIMITED SIRKETI (Turkey): Pilot data centre. It is an award-winning edge computing data centre. Alternative energy resources integration approach is the application area. It will support the redundancy of computational infrastructures in data centres and the testing of advanced virtualization systems.
- VATTENFALL AB (Sweden): Pilot data centre. It was established to support energy-related economic studies in computational clusters. Waste heat recovery approach is the application area.
Keywords: Artificial intelligence, computational fluid dynamics, renewable energy, big data, data centre, cooling, energy efficiency, net zero carbon emission.
