Cadence® Reality™ DC (formerly Future Facilities 6SigmaDCX product line) is a software platform for performance-aware design and operational planning of data centers through digital twin technology. The offering consists of two software solutions that enable designers, owners, and operators to balance the need for reliability and efficiency in data centers.

Cadence Reality DC Design enables engineers to design the next generation of data centers, inside and out, with physics-based simulation powered by computational fluid dynamics (CFD).

Cadence Reality DC Insight allows IT and Facilities Management Teams to collaborate on data center energy and performance optimization via a web-based portal when the data center is operational.

Cadence Reality DC Design enables the creation of fast and accurate data center digital twin models. These models are a virtual representation of an existing or future data center. They can be used to explore multiple design configurations and failure scenarios to fine-tune the overall approach to new data center design or reimagine existing legacy data centers. Companies can reduce costs and minimize failures while pursuing their sustainability goals by working in a virtual environment to maximize data center resilience, physical capacity, and cooling efficiency.

Using a digital twin to future-proof data center designs allows companies to stress test existing and future designs and verify data center performance within the software (Figure 1). This reduces the risk involved in any changes to the data center and can minimize the risk of downtime.

Designers can study the implications of different power and cooling scenarios using advanced functionality within the software suite to create multiple infrastructural layouts of power and cooling systems. These can be simulated through different model iterations and analyzed to define the most economical and energy-efficient data center design.

Figure 1: Example of a results plane showing cabinet inlet temperatures

Streamline modeling, solving, and reporting with intelligent items, solver automation, and single-click reporting
⯈ Prioritize sustainable data center design with carbon
usage analytics and energy efficiency reports
⯈ Ensure data center resilience by simulating component failure in your cooling or power infrastructure
⯈ Perform transient simulations to understand how data center design will operate over time and in failure scenarios
⯈ Analyze the impact of external environmental factors, including wind profiles, terrain roughness, humidity, solar gain, and more

Cooling Strategies and Data Center Metrics
Engineers can model various cooling strategies to determine the optimal cooling configuration. These include raised floors, non-raised floors, fan walls, in-row, and both indirect and direct adiabatic evaporative cooling, as well as liquid cooling solutions.

Furthermore, engineers can visualize facility performance with industry plots, including ASHRAE compliance, power usage effectiveness (PUE), Green Grid performance indicator (PI), and service-level agreement (SLA) compliance. The software provides carbon usage analytics and energy efficiency reports to help engineers make sustainable decisions.

Flow Network, Model Controls, and Power
An inbuilt 1D flow network allows fast simulation of chilled water distribution, liquid cooling solutions, or ducted air systems (Figure 2). The 1D system can be connected to the 3D data center model for co-simulation of the entire system, and the 1D flow network can be connected to the 3D model to quickly simulate liquid cooling in the data center.

Figure 2: Illustration showing the connection between the 3D
simulated data center model with the liquid cooling 1D flow network

Cadence Reality DC Design can model any modern control system, including variable frequency drives (VFDs), primary/ secondary configurations, and grouped or staged controls using temperature, pressure, humidity, or velocity sensors. Engineers can visualize the control logic with the control view canvas.

The entire power network can also be connected to show single-line diagrams, remote power panel (RPP) and power distribution unit (PDU) schedules, breaker overloads, and phase balance (Figure 3).

Figure 3: Software display of the power network diagram, expanded to show uninterruptible power supply (UPS), PDU, and cabinet connections

External Modeling
The software enables engineers to analyze the impact of external environmental factors (Figure 4), including wind profiles, terrain roughness, humidity, solar gain, and even exhaust emission contamination from generators.

Figure 4: Simulation results of the intake airflow path of
an external data center digital twin model

Transient Simulation, Failure, and What-If Analyses
Engineers can use the software to perform a wide array of transient simulations, including IT load variations or the failure of critical power and cooling infrastructure, to understand how data center performance fluctuates over time.

Additionally, engineers can maintain the facility’s resilience by testing the impact of switching off fans, pumps, chillers, or any part of the power network.

Finally, Cadence Reality DC Design can run what-if failure scenarios on any element of design to test layouts and study the implications of different power, loading, and cooling scenarios.

Comprehensive Library and Automated Reporting
Cadence Reality DC Design offers a comprehensive library of 8,000+ intelligent vendor items to facilitate the modeling process.

It can export photorealistic images and movies in gif, mp4, and other formats. Engineers can create customized, automated reports at the click of a button (Figure 5) to demonstrate designs.

Figure 5: Data center reports can be customized and automated for rapid report generation

⯈ Essential – This entry-level software package is for conceptual data center design and offers data center modeling to cabinet-level with eight-core solving capability. This package best
suits designers working on less complex models with conceptual design data.
⯈ Advanced – This software configuration enables simulation of the next generation of data centers, inside and out, with 32-core solving capability. This package is for advanced users who model complex data center environments to the cabinet and IT level using time-based simulations, 3D CAD integrations, and building information modeling (BIM). This option can simulate both the internal data center space and the external environment.
⯈ Pro – This fully comprehensive software suite offers best-in-class design software for simulating the complete data center ecosystem from chip to chiller with 32-core solving capability. This package provides all prior package functionalities, adding power, flow, data network, and weight modeling capability. The Pro package also enables the automation of tasks such as solving and reporting, including integrating with other tools and importing data for model updates.