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Volume 2026 · Issue 10-04

按期刊卷期页方式整理本期论文。每条仅使用日报已列出的可追溯公开来源,不新增未经核验事实。

Research Article算电协同

Grid Demand Flexibility Assessment of AI Data Centers via Batch Workload Temporal Shifting

Suntao Su, Liang Du, Shengyi Wang

Published 2026-09-29 · arXiv · Credibility S

The rapid growth of artificial intelligence (AI) data centers has introduced new challenges to power system operation. As their power demand becomes larger and more variable, quantitatively characterizing their demand flexibility is increasingly important for effective power system coordination. However, heterogeneous workload characteristics and resource requirements make this flexibility difficult to characterize …

Abstract, interpretation and reference

Abstract

The rapid growth of artificial intelligence (AI) data centers has introduced new challenges to power system operation. As their power demand becomes larger and more variable, quantitatively characterizing their demand flexibility is increasingly important for effective power system coordination. However, heterogeneous workload characteristics and resource requirements make this flexibility difficult to characterize directly. This paper proposes a framework for assessing the grid-compatible demand flexibility of AI data centers via batch workload temporal shifting. An averaging-based resource usage processing method is developed to map fine-resolution CPU, GPU and memory usage into unified time intervals compatible with power system operation. A workload temporal scheduling model is then formulated to shift batch workloads while preserving execution continuity, delay constraints, and server resource capacities, and is coupled with a utilization-dependent server power model to translate workload scheduling decisions into server power demand. Two complementary flexibility metrics are evaluated: short-term peak demand shaving and the maximum duration of sustained power reduction. Numerical results based on real GPU cluster traces demonstrate that workload temporal shifting can provide quantifiable and grid-compatible demand flexibility for AI data centers with limited disruption to computing workloads.

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Research ArticleAI 运维优化

Aging-Aware Online Distributed Scheduling for Lifecycle Carbon Reduction in Geo-Distributed Data Centers

Junyu Lin, Wenjie Liu, Shunbo Lei, Wentian Lu, Jianhui Wang, Junhong Liu

Published 2026-09-30 · arXiv · Credibility S

The rapid proliferation of data centers (DCs), driven by cloud computing and artificial intelligence (AI), has led to massive energy demand and carbon emissions, posing significant sustainability challenges. Carbon-aware optimization in geographically distributed data centers has been widely studied. Most existing approaches mainly focus on operational carbon emissions from server usage. However, existing literature…

Abstract, interpretation and reference

Abstract

The rapid proliferation of data centers (DCs), driven by cloud computing and artificial intelligence (AI), has led to massive energy demand and carbon emissions, posing significant sustainability challenges. Carbon-aware optimization in geographically distributed data centers has been widely studied. Most existing approaches mainly focus on operational carbon emissions from server usage. However, existing literature often ignores workload-induced thermal stress, which accelerates nonlinear hardware degradation. This leads to more frequent server replacements and ultimately increases embodied carbon emissions. To address these limitations, we propose a comprehensive carbon life-cycle modeling framework for distributed data centers. Apart from operational carbon emissions, this work combines workload scheduling with a utilization-dependent exponential aging model to evaluate long-term carbon costs from server degradation. In order to solve the proposed optimization model in an online and privacy-preserving manner, an enhanced Lyapunov framework with time-varying queue shifting (TVQS) is first introduced to handle system uncertainties. Then, a zero-sum perturbation-based alternating direction method of multipliers (ZSP-ADMM) framework is developed to enable distributed coordination across geographically separated data centers while protecting locally exchanged workload information. Simulation results demonstrate that the proposed approach achieves up to 13.0% lower carbon emissions and 12.6% lower operational costs compared with benchmarks.

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Research Article算电协同

PowerZooJax: A JAX-based Power System Benchmark for Reinforcement Learning

Zhanhua Pan, Xiao Liu, Zhilong Cao, Jianhong Wang, Dawei Qiu

Published 2026-09-28 · arXiv · Credibility S

Power system operation is a safety-critical sequential decision-making problem, making it a natural testbed for reinforcement learning (RL). However, existing RL environments for power systems are often narrow in scope and computationally limited by CPU-based simulation workflows, making large-scale evaluation difficult. We introduce PowerZooJax, a JAX-based benchmark suite for RL in power system operation. It provi…

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Abstract

Power system operation is a safety-critical sequential decision-making problem, making it a natural testbed for reinforcement learning (RL). However, existing RL environments for power systems are often narrow in scope and computationally limited by CPU-based simulation workflows, making large-scale evaluation difficult. We introduce PowerZooJax, a JAX-based benchmark suite for RL in power system operation. It provides five constrained Markov decision process tasks spanning generation, transmission, distribution, distributed energy resources, and data center microgrid. By rewriting power flow, economic dispatch, market clearing, and device dynamics as JAX computation graphs, PowerZooJax keeps the entire training and evaluation loop on the GPU. Experiments show substantial speedups over CPU-based simulations and demonstrate standardized evaluation of policy returns, safety violations, and out-of-distribution stress conditions. Our open-source benchmark is available at: https://github.com/powerzoojax/PowerZooJax.

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Research Article算电协同

Grid-Forming E-STATCOMs for Stable Integration of Large-Scale Data Centers: Modeling and Control

Prabhat Ranjan Bana, Novan Zakkia, Jean-Philippe Hasler, Christer Danielsson

Published 2026-09-27 · arXiv · Credibility S

The rapid expansion of large-scale AI data centers (AIDC) is introducing new stability challenges, particularly in weak or low-inertia networks characterized by fast, step-like demand variations and strict requirements on voltage and dynamic performance. This paper investigates the use of grid-forming (GFM) Enhanced STATCOMs (E-STATCOMs) to support reliable integration of such facilities. A power-admittance-based li…

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Abstract

The rapid expansion of large-scale AI data centers (AIDC) is introducing new stability challenges, particularly in weak or low-inertia networks characterized by fast, step-like demand variations and strict requirements on voltage and dynamic performance. This paper investigates the use of grid-forming (GFM) Enhanced STATCOMs (E-STATCOMs) to support reliable integration of such facilities. A power-admittance-based linear modelling framework is developed to capture system interactions and is validated through detailed EMT simulations. The results demonstrate that E-STATCOMs provide fast, well-damped responses to abrupt load changes while effectively mitigating low-frequency oscillations and interactions with network resonances. By enabling tunable dynamic behavior via a load balancer, virtual impedance, and coordinated active-reactive power support, the proposed approach allows precise shaping of system response and improved regulation at the point of connection. These features make E-STATCOMs a flexible and scalable solution for integrating large data centers into weak grids and long transmission systems, supported by a design-oriented framework that facilitates parameter selection and performance assessment without extensive reliance on EMT studies to meet grid codes and AIDC interconnection requirements.

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Research Article芯片与算力

Integrated Thermal and Power Management for Wave-Powered Subsea Data Centers via Nonlinear Model Predictive Control

Wanqun Yang, Jun Chen

Published 2026-09-28 · arXiv · Credibility S

This paper develops an integrated modeling and nonlinear model predictive control (NMPC) framework for coordinating thermal management, flexible workload scheduling, wave-power utilization, and battery operation in a wave-powered subsea data center. Realistic data center workloads are constructed from job-level CPU, memory, and GPU measurements from the MIT Supercloud dataset and divided into interactive and delay-t…

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Abstract

This paper develops an integrated modeling and nonlinear model predictive control (NMPC) framework for coordinating thermal management, flexible workload scheduling, wave-power utilization, and battery operation in a wave-powered subsea data center. Realistic data center workloads are constructed from job-level CPU, memory, and GPU measurements from the MIT Supercloud dataset and divided into interactive and delay-tolerant flexible jobs. Thermal behavior is represented by a three-node lumped model of the IT equipment, recirculating nitrogen, and pressure hull with surrounding seawater as the thermal boundary. The NMPC jointly optimizes the flexible workload power budget and cooling command subject to thermal, battery, and workload constraints. Closed-loop simulations under different workload, thermal, battery, and renewable-generation conditions demonstrate that the proposed framework maintains thermal safety while adapting cooling operation and flexible workload execution to wave-power availability and battery state-of-charge. The parametric studies show that battery capacity and wave-generation capacity strongly affect battery availability and flexible-workload queue accumulation, while excessive renewable generation capacity may lead to increased energy curtailment. Monte Carlo and distance-correlation analyses further show that flexible-job delay is relatively insensitive to the investigated system parameters, whereas terminal battery state-of-charge is primarily influenced by battery energy capacity and wave generation capacity.

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Research Article能效优化

Beyond PUE: A Local Impact Audit Framework for Data Center Environmental Accountability

Sharifa Sultana, Syed Ishtiaque Ahmed

Published 2026-09-20 · arXiv · Credibility S

Standard data center sustainability metrics, including Power Usage Effectiveness (PUE), Water Usage Effectiveness (WUE), and Carbon Usage Effectiveness (CUE), measure a facility's resource use and emissions intensity, normalized to IT energy use, without directly representing local resource scarcity, infrastructure capacity, or social footprint. This gap has become politically consequential. In the first quarter of …

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Abstract

Standard data center sustainability metrics, including Power Usage Effectiveness (PUE), Water Usage Effectiveness (WUE), and Carbon Usage Effectiveness (CUE), measure a facility's resource use and emissions intensity, normalized to IT energy use, without directly representing local resource scarcity, infrastructure capacity, or social footprint. This gap has become politically consequential. In the first quarter of 2026 alone, local opposition delayed or canceled roughly $130 billion in projects across the United States, driven overwhelmingly by recurring concerns over water use, power demand, infrastructure capacity, and transparency rather than internal efficiency, matching the total for all of 2025 [11]. We propose a five-category local impact audit framework covering efficiency, water stewardship, carbon and renewables, regulatory compliance, and local disclosure. The framework is designed for recurring quarterly assessment and independent verification against public records. We illustrate its application using publicly available data from three Illinois facilities that are currently at the center of local policy disputes, and we examine the data-access barriers that constrain independent verification. We position this framework as both a research contribution and a practical instrument for county-level policymakers evaluating data center permitting and moratorium decisions.

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Research Article算电协同

Beyond the Last Truffula Tree: SustainAI - A Water-Aware, Closed-Loop Framework for Environmentally Accountable AI

Farnaz Farid, Tashfia Towkee, Sania Nasreen, Sami bin Azad

Published 2026-09-25 · arXiv · Credibility S

As artificial intelligence (AI) becomes embedded in everyday life, its environmental footprint, particularly water consumption remains largely invisible. While energy and carbon impacts are widely recognized, the substantial freshwater demands of data center cooling and electricity generation receive little attention. To address this gap, we introduce SustainAI, a water-aware, closed-loop framework incorporating env…

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Abstract

As artificial intelligence (AI) becomes embedded in everyday life, its environmental footprint, particularly water consumption remains largely invisible. While energy and carbon impacts are widely recognized, the substantial freshwater demands of data center cooling and electricity generation receive little attention. To address this gap, we introduce SustainAI, a water-aware, closed-loop framework incorporating environmental accountability into AI deployment. SustainAI integrates real-time water metering, a hallucination-aware penalty model, and a water-aware routing algorithm that accounts for regional water stress. Evaluated via Small Language Models (SLMs) extracting health misinformation, results reveal an 11-fold variation in water footprint across geographically distributed data centers (0.0477 mL to 0.5360 mL per inference). Across 1,335 inference runs, the system consumed approximately 399 mL of water but produced only 240 correct outputs, demonstrating that substantial resources are spent on inaccurate responses. Crucially, SustainAI extends beyond technical optimization through a Care by Design lens, framing AI sustainability around relational ethics, regional equity, and ecological stewardship. By combining water monitoring, adaptive accountability, and Care by Design principles, SustainAI provides a practical foundation for integrating ethical care and environmental responsibility into AI infrastructure design and lifecycle management.

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Research Article算电协同

Data center cooling choices shift water impacts across the grid: An integrated water-energy model for sustainable data center development

Garrett Alston, Nancy Love, Rabab Haider

Published 2026-09-21 · arXiv · Credibility S

Data centers are being developed at an unprecedented pace, yet their energy and water impacts, and the spatial and temporal distribution of these impacts, remain poorly characterized. Data centers consume water for cooling (direct) and through electricity generation (indirect). Decisions on siting and cooling technology result in water-energy trade-offs that extend impacts beyond the facility's location. Existing as…

Abstract, interpretation and reference

Abstract

Data centers are being developed at an unprecedented pace, yet their energy and water impacts, and the spatial and temporal distribution of these impacts, remain poorly characterized. Data centers consume water for cooling (direct) and through electricity generation (indirect). Decisions on siting and cooling technology result in water-energy trade-offs that extend impacts beyond the facility's location. Existing assessment frameworks rely on facility efficiency metrics and average grid water intensity factors, suppressing the temporal impacts of data center load and generation availability. They also attribute indirect consumption to the facility's location rather than to the generators (and corresponding hydrologic regions) that respond to the added load, misattributing spatial impacts. To close this gap, we develop a computational model of the data center-energy-water nexus that links facility cooling and electricity demand with hourly economic dispatch, generator-level water consumption, and monthly subbasin depletion. Built on open-source data, the model resolves where and when water is consumed, and where this consumption compounds existing water risk or creates new risk. Using the model, we study different cooling configurations and proposed developments in the state of Michigan. Air-cooled data centers halve total water consumption relative to evaporative cooling, but increase electricity demand and raise indirect water consumption by one-third, shifting the water footprint from the facility to generators. Mapping these changes to subbasins reveals depletion increases beyond the data center sites, in regions that facility-level reporting may overlook. These results show that data center water and energy impacts cannot be assessed in isolation, motivating the need for integrated modeling to inform siting, design, and reporting practices.

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Research Article算电协同

Privacy-Preserving Coordinated Operation of Power Grids and AI Data Centers: A Checkpoint-Aware Three-Phase Scheme

Ziang Liu, Ruizhang Yang, Xin Cui, Francis Yunhe Hou

Published 2026-09-22 · arXiv · Credibility S

The rapid growth of large language model training and serving is driving AI data centers (AIDCs) toward gigawatt scale. Unlike conventional commercial loads, AIDCs possess significant operational flexibility through dynamic voltage and frequency scaling (DVFS) of training and inference workloads, while periodic model checkpointing can induce abrupt power drops and rebounds that erode operating reserves and increase …

Abstract, interpretation and reference

Abstract

The rapid growth of large language model training and serving is driving AI data centers (AIDCs) toward gigawatt scale. Unlike conventional commercial loads, AIDCs possess significant operational flexibility through dynamic voltage and frequency scaling (DVFS) of training and inference workloads, while periodic model checkpointing can induce abrupt power drops and rebounds that erode operating reserves and increase transmission congestion risks. Coordinating AIDC operation with grid scheduling under these unique operational characteristics is challenging because grid and AIDC operators are generally unwilling to share proprietary data and decision-making authority. This paper proposes a hierarchical privacy-preserving coordinated operation scheme between the power grid and AIDCs to address this gap. The proposed scheme contains three phases. In Phase I, the grid operator computes a certified inner approximation of the AIDCs security region for subsequent coordination. In Phase II, the AIDC operator coordinates training and inference AIDCs to optimize workload allocation within the certified security region and generate power schedules and checkpoint alerts. In Phase III, the grid operator solves a checkpoint-aware two-stage robust optimal power flow (OPF) considering renewable generation and checkpoint uncertainties. By exchanging only compact interface information, the framework preserves the privacy of both grid and AIDCs, avoids frequent iterative communication, and enables secure coordination with guaranteed feasibility. Numerical studies on a modified IEEE 14-bus system and a modified NYISO system demonstrate the effectiveness, robustness, and security of the proposed framework.

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Research Article芯片与算力

ETCInfer: An Energy-efficient Thermal-aware Cooling-joint Scheduler for LLM Inference in AI Datacenters

Rui Lu, Rui Ge, Huanghuang Liang, Xiaobo Zhou, Dan Wang

Published 2026-09-14 · arXiv · Credibility S

Large language model (LLM) inference in AI datacenters creates a coupled control problem between GPU serving and facility cooling. Raising ambient temperature setpoints can reduce cooling energy and carbon, but also shrinks thermal headroom, induces GPU throttling, and leads to Service-Level-Objective (SLO) violations. In this paper, we study joint cooling--computing control for LLM inference: minimizing per-job GPU…

Abstract, interpretation and reference

Abstract

Large language model (LLM) inference in AI datacenters creates a coupled control problem between GPU serving and facility cooling. Raising ambient temperature setpoints can reduce cooling energy and carbon, but also shrinks thermal headroom, induces GPU throttling, and leads to Service-Level-Objective (SLO) violations. In this paper, we study joint cooling--computing control for LLM inference: minimizing per-job GPU-plus-cooling energy while satisfying thermal safety and latency SLO constraints. We present ETCInfer, an energy-efficient, thermal-aware scheduler that selects a pre-job Computer Room Air Conditioner (CRAC) setpoint and adapts per-GPU frequency and micro-batch size during execution. ETCInfer builds compact physics-informed control models by calibrating GPU heat generation, chassis heat dissipation, CRAC power, and prefill/decode latency relations from telemetry. These models estimate hidden thermal states and time-to-throttle, enabling the scheduler to evaluate energy, temperature, and latency before applying an action. We formulate this joint setpoint--frequency--micro-batch control problem as a partially observable Markov decision process and design ETCAdapter, a learning-based controller that minimizes per-job energy under thermal safety and SLO constraints. We implement ETCInfer as a coordination layer over typical inference and cluster management stacks. Evaluation across real-trace simulation and validation experiments shows that ETCInfer reduces total job energy by up to 33.1%, thermal throttle exposure by up to 92.9%, and keeps SLO violation rates below 0.7% even at ambient temperatures up to $48^{\circ}\mathrm{C}$.

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Research Article算电协同

Job Class Thermal Intent Aware Liquid Cooling Allocation for AI Data Centers

Krishna Chaitanya Sunkara

Published 2026-09-25 · arXiv · Credibility S

GPU-dense AI data centers need to run on liquid cooling as air simply cannot shed the heat at these power densities. Yet the cooling loops themselves are blind to what workloads are about to run; they crank up flow only after a sensor catches a temperature climb, which can take 30 to 50 seconds. We built Job-Class Thermal Intent (JCTI) to close that window. The scheduler already knows a job is coming and what class …

Abstract, interpretation and reference

Abstract

GPU-dense AI data centers need to run on liquid cooling as air simply cannot shed the heat at these power densities. Yet the cooling loops themselves are blind to what workloads are about to run; they crank up flow only after a sensor catches a temperature climb, which can take 30 to 50 seconds. We built Job-Class Thermal Intent (JCTI) to close that window. The scheduler already knows a job is coming and what class it belongs to; JCTI feeds that information straight to the cooling controller so it can stage coolant before the heat shows up. We pulled the thermal signatures for each job class out of MLPerf GPU power traces and tuned arrival patterns against Alibaba cluster data. Over 120 paired Monte Carlo trials the numbers come out to 56.4% fewer thermal violations and 60.2% less cumulative overshoot than a straight PI loop. As AI data centers evolving towards gigawatt grid loads with highly fluctuating power swings, thermally-aware scheduling reduces sudden demand and improves load prediction in grid side. Cooling and scheduling have been running as two separate systems for years despite each one knowing something the other needs, JCTI wires them together.

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Research Article算电协同

CATS: A Carbon-Aware Task Simulator for Reducing AI Data Center Emissions

Dayuan Chen, Ziliang Zong

Published 2026-09-13 · arXiv · Credibility S

The rapid rise of generative AI is accelerating cloud data center expansion, with electricity demand projected to double by 2026. Because carbon-intensity varies by more than 5.5x across grids and times of day, where and when inference tasks execute significantly affects operational emissions. We address this issue with three aspects in this paper. First, we compile a global alignment dataset unifying 140 operationa…

Abstract, interpretation and reference

Abstract

The rapid rise of generative AI is accelerating cloud data center expansion, with electricity demand projected to double by 2026. Because carbon-intensity varies by more than 5.5x across grids and times of day, where and when inference tasks execute significantly affects operational emissions. We address this issue with three aspects in this paper. First, we compile a global alignment dataset unifying 140 operational and planned cloud regions across 8 major providers with five-minute carbon-intensity traces for 145 grid regions from 2022 to 2024, revealing that 50% of current sites lie in medium-to-high carbon-intensity grids, indicating a siting-carbon mismatch and unrealized carbon reduction potential. Second, we develop CATS (Carbon-Aware Task Simulator), a flexible trace-driven framework that profiles six AI inference tasks across multiple GPU types, synthesizes realistic diurnal curve, geographical and task mixes, and SLA constraints, and evaluates spatial and temporal schedulers against two baselines while reporting comprehensive metrics including carbon emissions, energy consumption, runtime, queue delay, and hardware utilization. Third, we quantify achievable CO2 savings under realistic constraints: in a 24-hour trace with 600,000 tasks at fleet utilization of 0.37, spatial shifting reduces CO2 by 38.4% versus speed-first baseline, while temporal shifting yields 16% savings with bounded SLA violations at 3.27%. These results advocate locating future data centers in low carbon-intensity grids and demonstrate that carbon-aware scheduling on today's fleets can achieve substantial operational emissions reduction.

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Research Article热管理与液冷

Could Underwater Data Centers Pose a Risk to AI Treaty Verification?

James Teague, Ashmita Rajmohan, Yannick Muehlhaeuser

Published 2026-09-16 · arXiv · Credibility S

Proposals for international agreements that limit frontier AI development depend on verification, and a central challenge is detecting undeclared compute facilities used to evade restrictions. Underwater data centers (UDCs) have been suggested as one such evasion vector, but their feasibility at frontier scale and their detectability have not been seriously assessed. We examine current UDC deployments, evaluate cons…

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Abstract

Proposals for international agreements that limit frontier AI development depend on verification, and a central challenge is detecting undeclared compute facilities used to evade restrictions. Underwater data centers (UDCs) have been suggested as one such evasion vector, but their feasibility at frontier scale and their detectability have not been seriously assessed. We examine current UDC deployments, evaluate construction and maintenance complexity relative to land-based facilities, and analyse the feasibility of a 100,000 H100-equivalent training run underwater. We find that power delivery and cooling are tractable, but interconnect and the hands-on maintenance that large training runs require are severe obstacles - surmountable only by a well-resourced state actor accepting large cost and schedule penalties, and only where concealment, rather than efficiency, is the objective. We then assess detectability through thermal, acoustic, optical and synthetic-aperture-radar (SAR) surveillance. Thermal detection of an operational pod is unlikely outside shallow, calm water; acoustic detection is marginally more effective, but faces limitations in attribution; and optical/SAR monitoring is most powerful during construction and maintenance, when the pressure-vessel fabrication base and the cable-laying fleet create distinctive signatures for AIS-tracking. We conclude that UDCs are a comparatively unlikely evasion route relative to underground or industrially disguised land-based facilities, but the residual risk is non-zero and warrants operationalising the detection modalities discussed.

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Research Article热管理与液冷

Convective Heat Transfer Optimization for Liquid Cooling Plates Driven by Field Synergy and Fractal Geometry

Zixu Han, Peng Zhang

Published 2026-09-11 · arXiv · Credibility S

The rapid development of liquid-cooled data centers has imposed imperative demands on the performance of liquid cooling plate. The density-based topology optimization (TO) is an effective approach to resolving the growing thermal-hydraulic performance requirements of liquid cooling plate. However, existing TO methods can hardly optimize convective heat transfer directly which is the intrinsic heat transfer mechanism…

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Abstract

The rapid development of liquid-cooled data centers has imposed imperative demands on the performance of liquid cooling plate. The density-based topology optimization (TO) is an effective approach to resolving the growing thermal-hydraulic performance requirements of liquid cooling plate. However, existing TO methods can hardly optimize convective heat transfer directly which is the intrinsic heat transfer mechanism, due to the highly complex and evolving structural topologies, varying flow and temperature fields, making it extremely challenging to explicitly describe the heat transfer coefficient and heat transfer area during TO process. A convective heat transfer topology optimization (CTO) method is proposed in this study, where the iteratively evolving heat transfer coefficient is explicitly depicted by the field synergy theory in the thermal objective, and directly described by the velocity and temperature fields without relying on specific geometry. Combined with the explicit depiction of heat transfer area by the fractal geometry theory, a CTO framework is built for a direct optimization of convective heat transfer under both the laminar and turbulent flow conditions. The CTO tends to generate more hierarchical and directional structural topologies in optimization results, which is conducive to reducing low-velocity stagnation zones and improving flow direction in branched channels, achieving enhanced synergy and thermal-hydraulic performance in the optimized liquid cooling plates. Compared with the TO results without incorporation of field synergy theory, the CTO can reduce average temperature rise by 20% while improving the Nusselt number by 15% under laminar flow conditions, and reduce maximum temperature rise by 10.2% and pressure drop by 25% under turbulent flow conditions.

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Research Article算电协同

Grid-Mode-Aware Model Predictive Control of Hybrid Energy Storage Systems for AI Data Center Power Smoothing

Xin Chen

Published 2026-09-03 · arXiv · Credibility S

To facilitate the grid-friendly integration of highly variable AI data center loads, this paper proposes a grid-mode-aware model predictive control (G-MPC) framework for managing a hybrid energy storage system (HESS) to smooth grid-side power demand. The framework optimally coordinates a battery energy storage system (BESS) and a supercapacitor (SC) by solving a multi-step optimization problem in a receding-horizon …

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Abstract

To facilitate the grid-friendly integration of highly variable AI data center loads, this paper proposes a grid-mode-aware model predictive control (G-MPC) framework for managing a hybrid energy storage system (HESS) to smooth grid-side power demand. The framework optimally coordinates a battery energy storage system (BESS) and a supercapacitor (SC) by solving a multi-step optimization problem in a receding-horizon manner. In particular, band-pass filter dynamics are directly embedded in the G-MPC formulation to extract and suppress grid-side power components associated with vulnerable grid oscillatory modes, thus mitigating load-induced grid oscillations. The resulting G-MPC optimization jointly minimizes violations of grid-side power-envelope, ramp-rate, and modal-power requirements and the degradation and power-ramping costs of the BESS and SC, while satisfying power limits, state-of-charge limits, and other operational constraints. To enable real-time implementation, a fix-and-re-optimize algorithm is developed to solve each G-MPC problem efficiently while preventing simultaneous charging and discharging. Extensive simulations demonstrate the effectiveness, flexibility, and computational efficiency of the proposed framework. The results also highlight the importance of explicitly suppressing power components associated with vulnerable grid modes, rather than merely reducing overall load variations, to effectively mitigate grid oscillations.

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Research Article算电协同

Spatial LLM Workload Shifting Needs Foresight: Model Commitment for AI Data Center Operation under Power Grid Constraints

Bojun Du, Hongyang Jia, Tonghui Li, Qingchun Hou, Ze Wang, Ershun Du, Ning Zhang

Published 2026-09-09 · arXiv · Credibility S

AI data centers may face power supply shortages during certain periods, requiring operators to shift large language model (LLM) inference workloads spatially to maintain service rates. However, existing workload-shifting methods typically assume that any data center with sufficient computing resources can immediately serve shifted requests, which may lead to infeasible transfers and unserved demand. This letter prop…

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Abstract

AI data centers may face power supply shortages during certain periods, requiring operators to shift large language model (LLM) inference workloads spatially to maintain service rates. However, existing workload-shifting methods typically assume that any data center with sufficient computing resources can immediately serve shifted requests, which may lead to infeasible transfers and unserved demand. This letter proposes model commitment (MC), a mixed-integer linear programming framework that jointly schedules model deployment and cross-site request routing under power constraints and electricity-price signals. First, MC formulates the intertemporal coupling introduced by model replica loading. Second, it translates prefill and decode latency requirements into the amount of demand that each replica can serve. Case studies based on real-world data show that MC enables AI data center operators to achieve a 100% service rate under time-varying grid conditions and reduce total operating cost by 29.0%.

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Research Article算电协同

From Grid to Chip: Power Architecture, Stability, and Flexibility of AI Data Centers

Yubo Song, Rui Kong, Takuro Umihara, Pooya Davari, Frede Blaabjerg, Subham Sahoo

Published 2026-09-10 · arXiv · Credibility S

The rapid growth of artificial intelligence (AI) computing is transforming data centers into large, dynamic electrical loads. Their deployment is primarily constrained by energy availability and grid-connection capacity, which is further aggravated by the ability of power-delivery architectures, control systems, and computing workloads to operate reliably during fast grid disturbances. This article presents a techno…

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Abstract

The rapid growth of artificial intelligence (AI) computing is transforming data centers into large, dynamic electrical loads. Their deployment is primarily constrained by energy availability and grid-connection capacity, which is further aggravated by the ability of power-delivery architectures, control systems, and computing workloads to operate reliably during fast grid disturbances. This article presents a technological perspective on AI data centers as grid-interactive computing systems. First, it reviews grid-integration bottlenecks, evolving connection policies, grid-code requirements, which has fostered new technological trends via spatio-temporal flexibility available through workload orchestration, cooling systems, on-site resources, and energy storage. Second, it maps the evolution of power-delivery architectures from medium-voltage grid interfaces to chip-level, discussing higher-voltage DC distribution, solid-state transformers, wide-bandgap devices, advanced chip-level power delivery, and liquid cooling. Third, it establishes a three-level stability framework spanning rack-level DC-bus dynamics, facility-level converter interactions, and system-level grid-coupled behavior. The framework connects dominant instability mechanisms, including constant power load effects, impedance interactions, forced oscillations, and operating-mode transitions, with suitable modeling, assessment, and mitigation approaches. Synthesizing these topics, this article highlights grid-to-chip co-design as a central requirement for scalable AI infrastructure, linking computing workloads, power-delivery systems, energy buffers, and grid operation.

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