Chandrakant Patel

Hewlett-Packard Laboratories
HP Fellow
M.S. Mechanical Engineering
1988

As a HP Fellow, Patel is responsible for strategically engaging in thermo-mechanical research of future microprocessors, servers and data centers at Hewlett-Packard Laboratories. He established the thermal technology research program at Hewlett Packard Laboratories, and with partners in the product R&D groups, started a virtual thermal community -- the vibrant HP Cool team.

Chandrakant enjoys teaching, and is an adjunct faculty member in computer aided design at Chabot College where he has taught undergraduate design courses for 16 years. He also teaches graduate level course in thermal management at U.C. Berkeley Extension and Santa Clara University.

Through the 90s, he charted the directions in thermo-mechanical research that led to innovations in chip and system cooling solutions. In the late 90s, he initiated the research in "smart" data center, arguing that the "data is the computer" and it requires a holistic approach in design and management. Patel motivated the Smart Data Center research based on economics and sustainability, championing and driving technologies to enable dynamic provisioning compute, power and cooling resources in the data center based on the need.

The intent of the "need based provisioning" in the Smart Data Center is to reduce the power consumed in the data center by half, and thus addressing the total cost of ownership and sustainability needs of the customers.

Chandrakant has been granted over 75 U.S. patents, several pending and has published over 70 technical papers. He is the winner of the 2005 Joel S. Birnbaum Prize for Innovation for "visualizing and leading the creation of end-to-end solutions for managing the energy requirements for computation thereby positioning HP as a leader in physical design of datacenters." The Birnbaum Prize is awarded annually to a member of HP Labs for contributions to HP or HP Labs that demonstrate extraordinary vision, perseverance, innovation and creativity.

Chandrakant received AS in Engineering from City College of San Francisco in 1981, BS in Mechanical Engineering from the University of California , Berkeley in 1983, and MS in Mechanical Engineering from San Jose State University in 1988. He is a registered professional Mechanical Engineer in the state of California.