How the Super data center was designed

H+l architecture--, a building, landscape and interior design company with more than 80 employees, has offices in areas such as Denver and Colorado, specializing in the planning and design of science, technology, healthcare and education programs. Scott Kuehn is a partner of the H+l Architecture company.

The construction project of the National Centre for Atmospheric Research (atmospheric research,ncar) Wyoming Super Computing Center (Wyoming supercomputing CENTER,NWSC) was decided by h+l Architecture design solutions, for the specific needs of this project, many data center building standards have to be abandoned by designers, replaced by a new solution to build an unprecedented facility, of course, such a vast project, of course, can not only ask a construction company, in addition to H Outside of +l architecture, the project team also includes Saunders Construction (Saunders construction), the California Data Center Design Group (California Data Centre), RMH Group, Rumsey Engineering and Martin/Martin Consulting (Martin/martin Consulting) Engineering Co.

For critical research, amazing computational power

The debate over global climate change is more intense than ever, and as a research institute for Climate Change, NCAR is now a bit out of date for new data centers, which are themselves big emitters, but the data center will be used for detailed studies of weather and climate, The results of the study will provide a key basis for decision makers to deal with global warming.

In addition to unlocking weather and climate secrets, this 153,000-square-foot data center will help answer a whole host of atmospheric and Earth science problems, and its storage facilities will preserve unique historical climate records. The NWSC will install more than 100,000 processors in a 24,000-square-foot area, which is 20 times the computing power of the current NCAR computing device.

Address Project Challenges

The first challenge for the NWSC project is that the project team members are from a number of agencies and companies, including the American Association of Atmospheric Research Universities, Wyoming University, Wyoming State Government, Cheyenne LEADS, the Wyoming Trade Commission, the National Natural Science Foundation, Cheyenne lighting, gas and electricity, Need to do a good job in coordination.

In addition to the need to do a good deal of coordination, must provide a long-term operation of the solution, at least to be able to serve customers 40 years. H+l has studied various possible solutions for each issue, from battery type to special generators, to how to better comply with the guidelines issued by DOD.

From the data center scale, although the data center is small to medium size, but it needs to replace and update the computer equipment is higher than the conventional, it will continuously use the world's fastest, most advanced computer systems, and other rarely update the device, unlike the data center, The average computer equipment NWSC every 3 years will be fully updated, and the old equipment will be eliminated.

Planning for future development

In NWSC's design, another key issue is how to better adapt to future development, NCAR provides a competitive procurement process for supercomputers, it is difficult to predict what type of computer will be used, and computer systems have changed a lot in recent years, and the next generation of computers is relatively stable, The future of advanced technology may produce many different systems, designers can not predict the future of the system to reserve what kind of space, but in any case, to the future development of long-term planning.

NWSC has a total of 12,000 square feet of elevated floors, H+l's total planning is twice times this number, the entire building will be modular design, to achieve good scalability and upgrades, to adapt to future changes. For most data centers, the use of air refrigeration systems is the best and most economical solution, but NWSC requires two refrigeration systems, one is air cooled and the other is water-cooled, and in this project, as in most data centers, equipment refrigeration is an important issue, obviously, the faster the computer, The more heat it produces. H+l's solution for NWSC also includes the use of wind power, because Wyoming State's Happy Jack Wind power is close to the data center, and Wyoming has a lot of untapped power, so the power supply will not be a bottleneck in the future.

Add Green design elements: LEED Gold

H+l's design for NWSC is sustainable, the entire building meets the LEED Gold certification standard, it has the ability to monitor energy consumption and power efficiency (PUE) in real time, PUE is a measure of the Green Grid Association, NWSC PUE value is very low because it uses vaporization refrigeration technology, The technology works very well in the Wyoming climate environment.

NWSC need to replenish refrigeration less than 200 hours a year, most of the time, the entire building uses outdoor air to achieve vaporization refrigeration, compared with traditional data centers, light this refrigeration technology can reduce the NWSC annual energy consumption of 80%. H+l's design also mentions the use of the heat generated by the server for office heating or melting the road ice, in addition, indoor lighting design is also in place, the day basically do not have to open the lighting, the light of this design can also save a huge amount of electricity costs for the data center.

Make the visitors and the staff feel warm

Most data centers will reject visitors, but NWSC is not the same, whether it is a long-term duty staff, or occasional visitors, will feel very comfortable, NCAR has a dedicated visitor center, where you can see the full picture of the entire data center, and hope that the general public can come here to visit and study, Students here can see the most advanced science and technology of the 21st century, and have the opportunity to close contact with their own scientific idols. NWSC will be partnering with Wyoming State University to open relevant courses, with a further 71 member universities, 17 affiliated institutions and 16 international affiliates benefiting.
In addition to providing friendly design elements for visitors, the staff who stayed here for a long time were also comfortable, bathed in natural sunlight, breathed in fresh air, and had a 2900-square-foot interior courtyard with grass and a variety of plants, as well as benches, where employees could relax after work.