Online Updating of Computer Model Output Using Real-Time Sensor Data

Data center thermal management has become increasingly important because of massive computational demand in information technology. To advance the understanding of the thermal environment in a data center, complex computer models are extensively used to simulate temperature distribution maps. However, due to management policies and time constraints, it is not practical to execute such models in a real time fashion. In this article, we propose a novel statistical modeling method to perform real-time simulation by dynamically fusing a base, steady-state solution of a computer model, and real-time thermal sensor data. The proposed method uses a Kalman filter and stochastic gradient descent method as computational tools to achieve real-time updating of the base temperature map. We evaluate the performance of the proposed method through a simulation study and demonstrate its merits in a data center thermal management application. Supplementary materials for this article are available online.