The technology uses a network of sensors -- 900 of them in a 185 square metre data centre in Palo Alto, California. The sensors feed data to a control system that governs air flow and temperature settings of air conditioning units.
Instead of running air conditioning at full speed and the standard 21 degrees Celsius, the units might be set so blowers run slower and produce 25-degree air when possible, said Chandrakant Patel, a technologist at HP Labs. He called the technology the "dynamic smart-cooling controller".
Patel argues there's plenty of room for improvement in the brute force methods that prevail today in data centre cooling. "The state of the art is lacking," he said.
Data centre operators are struggling with burgeoning energy demands as servers are packed more densely and consume more electricity. Performance per watt has become a mantra at Intel and other companies whose products are now in the hot seat, while Advanced Micro Devices and Sun Microsystems trumpet their products' relative energy efficiency.
Customer trends spotlight the growing power problem, said IDC analyst John Humphries, who said his firm's customer surveys show:
HP is building its sensor technology into a new 3,250 square metre data centre in Bangalore, India, and is looking at other internal sites, Patel said.
Key to the technology is preventing hot spots that cause server failure; data centre operators aren't willing to accept higher risk with a more flexible cooling system.
