Dear Suhas Rao Tamvada ,

Take a look at the data presented below:

The effect of data center temperature on energy efficiency

Server’s capabilities are increasing at or beyond the rate ofperformance improvement gains predicted by Moore’s Lawfor the silicon itself. The challenge for the InformationTechnology (IT) owner is housing and operating all of thiscomputational power in the Data Center. With morecomputational power in each unit volume, the industry isexperiencing a significant increase in power density andhence a greater cooling challenge. The ability to nowtackle computational tasks that were previouslyunattainable has driven energy costs to new levels.Methods to reduce the energy used in cooling thesemachines are being studied throughout the industry. One ofthe areas being considered is increasing the Data Centerserver ambient inlet temperature. ASHRAE [1] suggests arecommended limit of 20 – 25°C for the most advancedData Centers. There is a belief that operating at the highend of this range or above it will reduce the total power usein the Data Center by making the cooling system moreefficient. A thermodynamic analysis clearly indicates thatincreasing the temperature of the high temperature heatsource, while holding the lower temperature heat sinkconstant, will give an efficiency gain to the heat removalfrom the system. Unfortunately the simple model does notcapture all of the components of the overall system andmay lead to an erroneous conclusion. In fact, increasing theambient temperature can lead to an increase in power usageof some components and systems in the Data Center astemperature goes up. The overall room energy use mayonly go down marginally or may even go up at warmertemperatures. In this paper we examine the completeenergy picture from the utility connection to the rejection ofheat from the facility to the outdoor environment and lookat the impact an increased ambient temperature will haveon each component in that chain. This analysis indicatesthat there is an optimum temperature for Data Centeroperation that will depend on each Data Center’s individualcharacteristics, include IT equipment, cooling systemarchitecture, Data Center location (e.g. outside ambientconditions), as well as other factors. Additional impacts ofan increasing ambient inlet temperature, such as reliabilityissues and operational complexity are also discussed. It isconcluded that simply raising the ambient temperature inthe Data Center may not have the desired effect of energyuse reduction (PDF) The effect of data center temperature on energy efficiency. Available from:

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/4342355_The_effect_of_data_center_temperature_on_energy_efficiency

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The Rise Of Semiconductor Powered XPU

PUBLISHED DECEMBER 27, 2020 by Chetan Arvind Patil

THE NEED FOR SEMICONDUCTOR POWERED XPU

Every software application eventually has to get executed on a hardware system. Whether the software application is running on a smartphone or a data center, the data processing request has to get decoded (binary instructions) before the hardware system can process the request successfully. This seamless exchange of processes between software and hardware forms the base for a computer system.

Software form factor, user interface, and the speed might have changed over the years. However, the need to have a processing unit that can execute all the software code has not. Over the last two decades, the de-facto processing unit – the Central Processing Unit (CPU) – has seen several semiconductor and computer architecture backed technological advancement, that has taken computing to the next level.

As the software layers (application, presentation, session, and transport) are becoming model-driven (more pro-active, than re-active), so is the need to process the unique data/compute/memory intensive requests at the hardware-level.

Traditional CPU earlier was designed to handle a single request at a time. Then, the computing world moved towards multi-CPU (multi-cores) to cater to the parallel computing demand. Today, the de-facto is a System-On-A-Chip (SoC) that packs the CPU, the Graphics Processing Unit (GPU), and other processing units to process the high-resolution, high-speed, highly-data intensively requests in the shortest possible time.

Semiconductor Powered XPU (X Processing Unit) Are More Application-Specific Than General-Purpose

The integrated system (mainly CPU + GPU on an SoC) has not been able to keep up with the computing world’s data processing demand. It has pushed the computer architects to design new types of processing units (apart from high-bandwidth memory, cache coherence, and smarter interconnect topology) that are more application-specific than general-purpose.

This race to come up with the new type of processing units has given rise to XPU:

• X = Application Domain — Vision, Graphic, Neural, X-Reality, Video, Audio, and so on
• P = Processing
• U = Unit

XPU is different than CPU and GPU as it caters to the specific needs of the application. XPU is more application-specific, and it can work standalone or as a co-processor/co-unit alongside the CPU and GPU. XPU is geared towards throughput and speedy data management that takes the best out of the CPU and GPU design methodology to enable application-specific needs. XPU is not only Application-Specific Integrated Circuit (ASIC) due to the workload it is designed to cater to, but can also be classified as Application-Specific Standard Product (ASSP).

The rise of XPU is enabling a new era in computing. The hardware and the semiconductor market are enjoying different challenges and solutions the XPU brings. Intel is betting big on it, and so is AMD. Apart from these two semiconductor giants, there are numerous innovative startups (and academic research) that have XPU powered solutions and are pushing the computing industry towards next-gen data processing.

Several types of XPU are available. It is vital to understand how these differ from each other apart from the two processing giants – the CPU and the GPU.

https://www.chetanpatil.in/the-rise-of-semiconductor-powered-xpu/

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Difference between GPU Temperature and Junction Temperature? And what to follow?

As the title suggests, what is the difference? I find that junction is generally higher than GPU temperature. Is it the temperature I should be looking at for cooling purposes or is that the GPU temperature? Or both?

https://www.reddit.com/r/Amd/comments/ck1jjl/difference_between_gpu_temperature_and_junction/

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https://forums.tomshardware.com/threads/what-is-considered-a-good-gpu-temperature.3710497/

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Dear Suhas Rao Tamvada,

You can check out ARK, which is an online database of the latest CPUs, GPUs, and other processors. It contains detailed information on the latest processing technologies and junction temperatures of the latest XPUs in the industry. Additionally, you can also check out Tom's Hardware, which provides reviews and benchmarks of the latest hardware and can also provide you with the junction temperatures of the latest XPUs. The maximum junction temperature for the latest XPUs (2023) is 125 °C.