Announcing Cadence Reality DC

Digital twins are an important technology moving forward. Designers and operators of complex systems need to be able to understand how systems will work in a diverse range of scenarios throughout their lifetime. When connected to real-time data, a digital twin—a digital copy of an object or system—illuminates the physical system’s true current state and, in turn, predicts the system’s future performance or behavior to enable quick, effective business decisions that support future planning.

Cadence recently announced the new Cadence Reality Digital Twin Platform, the industry’s first comprehensive digital twin solution to facilitate enhanced decision-making across multiple industries, such as automotive, healthcare, aerospace, finance, oil, and gas. This platform marks a transformative moment in the AI revolution.

This blog covers the first product of the Cadence Reality Digital Twin Platform, namely Cadence Reality DC. Cadence Reality DC, the industry’s first campus-wide digital twin for data centers, revolutionizes the data center industry’s ability to cope with energy efficiency demands and AI high-density deployments across the entire data center campus.

Digital Twins in the Data Center Industry

Digital twins are a necessity in the data center industry when it comes to dealing with the escalation of AI and high-density equipment. All businesses, big and small, are reliant on data centers of different kinds to house and process their data with resilience, security, and efficiency. The increase in power-hungry technology means data centers will need to perform like never before.

Data centers are designed at a single point in time, but that design is expected to keep pace with technological advancements that span years, if not decades, and take such developments safely in their stride. Not only must they remain online 24x7, but now they also need to utilize their capacity in an energy-efficient manner with environmental regulations looming on the horizon. To keep pace with business demands, many are forced to rush the deployment of IT, which can lead to complications and stranded capacity. 

There is an urgent need to provide technologies that support a more environmentally responsible approach to the undeniable escalation of AI workloads and their impact on the data center industry. That’s where digital twin technology shines.

Enter Cadence Reality DC

Performing analysis in a virtual replica—rather than a live data center—enables better decision-making without risk. A digital twin can be used to analyze multiple scenarios before deciding upon a fixed course of action without impacting anything in the live data center environment. Cadence Reality DC enables visibility across the entire value chain, using models built with smart equipment to ensure that the digital twin model behaves accurately and demonstrates how the combined control systems behave in conjunction with each other.

It also supports the adoption of innovative technologies by enabling operators to model and test how their data center will behave before going through with any new implementation. Take liquid cooling for example. Customers are modeling liquid cooling scenarios within Cadence Reality DC using 3D/1D co-simulation to understand efficiencies that might be gained with the adoption of liquid cooling and facilitate more effective cooling in the face of high-density equipment. Enabling the effective adoption of liquid or a combination of liquid and air cooling will be critical for catering to high-power density equipment that is emerging alongside AI.

While data centers are grappling with growing computing demands, they are also under pressure to prioritize sustainability and energy efficiency. Data center PUE scores have stagnated in recent years at around PUE1.5, whilst best-in-class data centers consistently attain scores of PUE1.1. This means that many data centers globally could be using 5X more overhead energy than necessary. And with a global data center usage of around 2% of global power usage, data center technologies that support a path to a greener future should be adopted quickly. Cadence Reality DC offers customizable dashboards on energy efficiency and includes automated reporting features that make it easy to track ESG-related metrics and meet sustainability goals.

Key Features and Benefits

Cadence Reality DC virtualizes the entire data center ecosystem. Our data center software platform can model any data center configuration, including complex cooling strategies and modern control systems. The software streamlines modeling, solving, and reporting with intelligent items (i.e., objects that know how they should behave/interact with other objects), solver automation, and single-click reporting. Cadence Reality DC users can also perform transient simulations to understand how the data center will operate over time and in failure scenarios. The software is always ready to predict with current data and minimal supervision through automations and integrations. Specifically, the software automates model upkeep through integrations with environmental monitoring systems, ticketing software, data center infrastructure management (DCIM), and CSV spreadsheets.

Data center professionals can use the software to track and plan deployment with IT placement suggestions based on the necessary IT requirements and availability. Teams can test these deployment options and failure scenarios to study the implications of different power, loading, and cooling scenarios. The software can organize large volumes of data, track changes, and automate customized reports with photorealistic images and videos to ensure that not only does the right data get to the right stakeholders, but that data is intuitive and easy to understand. The software can also visualize data center performance with industry metrics, including ASHRAE standards, power usage effectiveness (PUE), and SLA compliance. This wide array of data capture, plus carbon usage analytics and energy efficiency reports, are all included in the software to help data center teams make more sustainable decisions.

Our data center software platform includes data network, power, cooling, and external modeling tools as well to make it easier to manage more aspects of data center design and operations under one platform. Data center teams can manage power connectivity using circuit phase, distribution voltage, failure currents, and more from within the software. Teams can analyze data network connectivity with port-to-port connectivity management. Certain offerings in the platform can simulate airflow and cooling using computational fluid dynamics (CFD) to enable teams to discover cooling performance inefficiencies, reduce deployment risks, optimize energy efficiency, and increase capacity utilization. The software includes external modeling functionality so engineers can analyze the impact of external environmental factors, including wind profiles, terrain roughness, humidity, solar gain, and even exhaust emission contamination from generators.

Smarter, Faster, and More Effective Software

The upcoming release, Cadence Reality DC 2024.1, is the smartest data center software we’ve ever released. It can handle the ever-changing demands of the modern data center using digital twin technology for current and future deployment and analysis of failure scenarios. With each new release, our software gets smarter, faster, and more effective at helping our customers handle whatever technological advancement comes their way.

Learn more about Cadence Reality DC by visiting the product page or fill out our free trial form to receive a personalized software demo.