Keynote Address: Where Does the Power Go in High-Scale Data Centers?

The cost advantages of high-scale services make them the dominant means of delivering consumer software, a growing part of enterprise IT infrastructure, and an inevitable part of our future. The application of high-scale services to more and more problems is bounded only by the value of the problem and the cost of the aggregate hardware and software solution. As solution costs fall, the number of problems that can be efficiently addressed continues to rise. Power is the most important limiting factor.

This talk focuses on understanding exactly where the power goes in a modern high-scale data center, some of what can be done about it, and where the interesting software problems lie. We will look at where power is spent in a high-scale data center: power distribution from the property line; PDUs, switchgear, transformers, and the UPS; CPU and memory; how servers are designed; and the software problems around raising utilization and efficiency. Finally, we look in detail at the mechanical cooling systems design.