Grants and Contributions:

Grant or Award spanning more than one fiscal year (2017-2018 to 2021-2022).

Data Centres (DCs) are the physical infrastructure behind critical information technology (IT) services thatx000D
support our digital lives. Thus, they form an indispensable part of 21st century society. The state-of-the-artx000D
process of establishing these massive infrastructure is a tedious and lengthy manual exercise leading to inherentx000D
design inefficiencies resulting in unnecessarily high capital and operating costs for end-users. Our industryx000D
partner Cinnos Mission Critical Incorporated has introduced an innovative family of products, called the Smartx000D
Mission Critical X (SMC-XTM), which are factory-built cabinets to house IT equipment, containing all thex000D
supporting equipment required to run them. However, due to lack of rigorous scientific design methodologiesx000D
to understand the performance implications of the overwhelming number of choices of component selection,x000D
layout, and inter-connections, SMC-XTM cannot yet compete with the energy efficiency and costs ofx000D
custom-built DCs used for large volume applications. Developing a rigorous methodology is non-trivial due tox000D
the complex inter-component coupling and discrete variations in input conditions that arise from its modularx000D
nature. To overcome these challenges, we will develop and validate a novel design optimization methodologyx000D
to transform the next generation of SMC-Xs into a globally competitive product line in the worldwide $100B+x000D
DC industry. The proposed novel combination of our modelling and optimization approaches is quite general.x000D
It can be extended to design other modular systems with strong multiphysics coupling between components, forx000D
instance, in switchgears and computer hardware. This project will develop the technology and tools required tox000D
transform this concept into a globally competitive product line catering to the $100B+ DC industry. The resultsx000D
promise considerable commercial revenues to Canada, the creation of 2,000+ manufacturing/assembly jobs, asx000D
well as a substantial amount of energy savings.