Thermal; Power Efficiency - Dell PowerEdge M910 Technical Manual

Thermal

The M910 thermal solution includes:

Optimized airflow impedance for individual blade and chassis level airflow balancing

Custom air baffling directs airflow through the components to maintain proper cooling

Custom-designed heat sinks maintain CPU, IOH and Intel 7500 chip temperatures within thermal
design targets

Highly Optimized Fan Control Algorithm such as the following:
Base fan speeds are a function of hardware configuration and ambient temperature to
—
minimize airflow for a given environment
PID control algorithms are used for both CPU and DIMMs to maintain appropriate thermal
—
margin
Double refresh switching allows for DIMM temperature excursions up to 95°C while
—
maintaining performance and thermal design targets as follows:
The M910 thermal algorithm monitors the thermal sensor on each DIMM to maintain
>
DIMM temperatures below the typical 85°C specification in normal operating conditions.
Under extreme operating conditions, the thermal algorithm can switch the DIMMs into
>
Double Refresh mode allowing an additional 10°C of thermal headroom. In Double
Refresh mode, DIMMs are allowed to operate as high as 95°C.

Power efficiency

One of the main features of blade servers is enhanced power efficiency. The PowerEdge M910
achieves higher power efficiency by implementing the following features:

User-configurable power options via the M1000e CMC

Improved power budgeting

Voltage regulator efficiency improvements

CPU VR dynamic phase shedding

Switching regulators instead of linear regulators

Closed loop thermal throttling

Use of DDR3 memory (lower voltage compared to DDR2)

Memory VR static phase shedding

BIOS Power/Performance options page

Active Power Controller (BIOS-based CPU P-state manager)

Ability to throttle memory

Ability to disable a CPU core

Ability to turn off embedded NICs or PCIe lanes when not being used

Energy Smart components at the M1000e chassis level to selectively enable more computing
performance with less power consumption
PowerEdge M910 Technical Guide 18