Revolutionary Cadence Reality Digital Twin Platform to Transform Data Center Design for the AI Era

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Cadence Design Systems, Inc. introduced the industry’s first comprehensive AI-driven digital twin solution to facilitate sustainable data center design and modernization, marking a significant leap forward in optimizing data center energy efficiency and operational capacity. The revolutionary Cadence® Reality™ Digital Twin Platform virtualizes the entire data center and uses AI, high-performance computing (HPC) and physics-based simulation to significantly improve data center energy efficiency by up to 30%.

The innovative platform will benefit data center designers and operators navigating the complexities of modern data center systems, particularly in addressing issues that arise from stranded capacity due to inefficient use of data center compute and cooling resources and in handling AI-driven workloads and their environmental impact in an age of increasing electricity scarcity. Data centers in the United States used more than 4% of the country’s total electricity last year, according to the International Energy Agency (IEA), and are expected to grow exponentially in the coming decades.

“As data centers face increasing pressure to prioritize sustainability and energy efficiency in the face of exponential AI growth, the Cadence Reality Digital Twin Platform will optimize every aspect of data center design and operations, improve energy efficiency and pave the way for a more efficient, resilient and environmentally friendly future,” said Tom Beckley, senior vice president and general manager, Custom IC & PCB Group, Cadence.

The Cadence Reality Digital Twin Platform uses AI for model generation and simulation to accurately predict the external physical forces that impact data center operation, such as airflow, wind speeds, building obstructions on air intake and complications from internal and external temperature changes. Key benefits of the Cadence Reality Digital Twin Platform include:

• Advanced Modeling Capabilities: Simulates a vast range of design scenarios and operational strategies to identify the most energy-efficient solutions unique to each data center.
• Environmental Consideration: Integrates external environmental factors into the design process, enabling the development of resilient and sustainable data center operations.
• Customized Reporting: Delivers automated, detailed reports tailored to the specific requirements of each project, facilitating a deep understanding of potential energy savings and efficiency improvements.
• Innovative Cooling Strategies: Evaluates multiple cooling systems and their impact on energy consumption, offering insights into the most effective cooling solutions.
• Latest Cadence Solvers: Cadence Reality Digital Twin Platform is integrated with Cadence’s leading multiphysics solvers—enabling the same accurate, high-capacity, multi-domain engines to scale from chiplets to climate.

Cadence’s transformative design platform will accelerate the development of next-generation data centers and AI factories across every industry. Integrated with the NVIDIA Omniverse™ development platform, it enables up to 30X faster design and simulation workflows.

Industry leaders are praising the groundbreaking Cadence Reality Digital Twin Platform, highlighting its role in driving energy efficiency, optimizing operations and preparing for the future demands of AI workloads. The platform is heralded for its ability to create comprehensive digital twins of physical data centers, enabling precise planning, analysis and management of infrastructure to meet the evolving needs of businesses and the environment.

Pascal LeCoq, Worldwide Director, Sustainable Data Center Modernization, HPE

“HPE incorporates leading-edge technologies, like the Cadence Reality Digital Twin Platform, to help drive energy efficiency, optimize capacity and reduce carbon footprints for customers. We’ve had many instances of customer success, including helping to enable a Tier IV-certified colocation provider to guarantee competitive energy costs while meeting its service-level objectives, improving its environmental performance and reducing its carbon-equivalent emissions.”

Paul Finch, CTO, Kao Data

“The Cadence Reality Digital Twin Platform has been instrumental in helping us make better, more informed decisions for our business and clients. We extensively modeled our Harlow Data Center Campus within their design software to evaluate an innovative cooling design that prioritized energy efficiency, developing the UK’s first wholesale colocation data center without mechanical cooling. Additionally, Cadence’s Reality Digital Twin Platform has enabled us to accommodate clients’ requests for high-density/AI-driven workloads.”

Patrick Moorhead, Founder, CEO and Chief Analyst, Moor Insights & Strategy

“All businesses and industries rely on data centers to house and process their data with resilience, security and efficiency. Data centers, old and new, are expected to maintain pace with technological advancements that span years, if not decades. They must remain online 24x7 and utilize their capacity in an energy-efficient manner without exposing their operations to the risk of downtime amid unforeseen demands. The Cadence Reality Digital Twin Platform demonstrates the company’s forward-thinking approach in developing an environmentally responsible solution to the undeniable escalation of AI workloads and their impact on the data center industry.”

Andrew Chang, Executive Director, NV5

“Deploying data centers for operation with the latest AI high-density workloads and ensuring they are capable of anticipated power trends requires insight. It’s exciting to create a digital twin using the Cadence Reality Digital Twin Platform to plan the deployment of current workloads and future-proof the investment. Through close collaboration with NVIDIA and Cadence, NV5 has utilized the Cadence Reality platform to optimize data center efficiency, performance and reliability, as well as monitor how the systems behave in designed-for-failure resiliency scenarios. In our experience, the Cadence Reality platform is the most complete simulation tool for data center infrastructure in the industry.”

Giordano (Gio) Albertazzi, CEO, Vertiv

“The power density required to support AI is unprecedented and accelerating. This requires major infrastructure strategy changes for new data center builds and the retrofit of existing ones. As a world leader in data center critical infrastructure solutions, Vertiv delivers mission-critical power and cooling solutions to support high-performance compute, including liquid cooling solutions for NVIDIA's latest GPU-based loads. Leveraging the innovative data center design and operations platform from our strategic technology partner, Cadence, will provide visibility of how our data center critical infrastructure can best support these leading-edge deployments. The Cadence Reality Digital Twin Platform enables us to design even more energy-efficient solutions with the confidence that they will deliver the designed-for capacity in a variety of scenarios.”

Today’s announcement unveils a new chapter of Cadence’s Intelligent System Design™ strategy to help customers develop differentiated products across a wide range of industries and market verticals.