Irregular Blade Form Factor Enables Tall Components, Improves Airflow, and Maximizes Density
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Del.icio.us| IP.com Number | IPCOM000181378D |
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| Dated | Mar 31, 2009 UTC | ||
| Size | 5 page(s) (44.0 KB) | ||
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Publication Summary
The traditional physical design of a blade server system utilizes a blade with a basic rectangular shape with constant dimensions along its width, height, and depth. While this is a simple and easy to build allocation of space, it is usually a compromise that poorly matches the size of the interior components with the requirement for overall blade density within the chassis volume. Disclosed here is a set of new and less conventional methods of designing a blade form factor that optimize for component height and thermal efficiency while maximizing the number of blade servers in a chassis.| Country | |
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| Language | English (United States) |
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Irregular Blade Form Factor Enables Tall Components , Improves Airflow, and Maximizes Density
A traditional rectangular blade server must pack both tall components like CPU heatsinks and memory modules (abbreviated here as DIMMs) with standard board level parts with very little component height off the printed circuit board (PCB). If the blade is made too narrow, the heatsink will be too short or will need to be made of more costly materials, and the DIMMs will need to be installed on angled connectors, which reduces the number of DIMMs that can be designed into the product.
The core of the idea is an irregularly shaped blade design coupled with a mirrored connector system, which allows a portion of the blade to support tall components. When the blade is turned upside down, it fits together with another of the same type of blade to form a two-blade pair with tall components and improved density. This same scheme can also be used to increase the airflow thru standard width CPU heatsinks by stealing excess width in the back of one blade for use by the primary airflow of another blade.
Figure 1 shows the front view of a standard blade form factor, along with three different implementations of the idea.
Blade A is the standard blade form factor
Blade B is an irregular form factor supporting tall components and increased airflow with 2/3 blade/slot effective density.
Blade C is an irregular form factor supporting tall components with 1 blade/slot effective density.
Blade D is an irregular form factor supporting increased airflow with 1.0 blade/slot effective density.
Figures 2-5 show per...