Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

Cirocco Live Liquid Cooled Rack

Posted by CowboyNeal on from the big-iron-on-the-hip dept.

Mark Grant writes "Cirocco have developed a liquid cooled rack of AMD Duron 1.1Gs in a Beowulf cluster. The rack has been installed in Cambridge University, England and has been under trial since Christmas. The system is being put through its paces running chemical research algorithms. Critical to Cirocco's liquid cooling system are the hot swappable quick couplings. These allow servers to be disconnected whilst the cooling system is in operation." The graph with live temperature readings is pretty neat.

11 of 119 comments (clear)

  1. Just Imagine by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    Taking just one of those from the cluster.

    it would be like have a pc.

    wouldn't it

  2. Hot swappable? by questamor · · Score: 5, Funny

    The idea of "Hot swappable" when it comes to cooling couplings is making my head spin.

  3. nice rack! by joe_bruin · · Score: 4, Insightful

    didn't cray master the liquid cooled cabinet design, like, 30 years ago?

  4. Liquid cooled rack? by sssmashy · · Score: 5, Funny

    Personally, I always thought a liquid cooled rack is what happens when Pamela Anderson spills beer down her shirt...

  5. Chemical research? by moosesocks · · Score: 4, Funny

    I wonder what type of chemical research these systems will be conducting... perhaps they will determining the reaction between water (H2O) and Silicon printed circuit boards? (come to think of it, reasearch isn't the only thing they'll be conducting)

    --
    -- If you try to fail and succeed, which have you done? - Uli's moose
  6. maybe... by deadsaijinx* · · Score: 5, Interesting

    I'm missing something. As cool as it is, why do you need to liquid cool 1.1Ghz Athlons. Its nothing a fan can't handle adequitely and at a much more desireable cost. Are they just going for the wow factor, or is there an actually reason for the liquid cooling.

    Was going to make a beowulf joke, but then you insensitive clods would mark me redundant (I'm only like the 20th poster, how redundant can I be?)

    --
    YOU SUCK BALLS!
    1. Re:maybe... by ComputarMastar · · Score: 5, Insightful
      From the site:
      Each cpu dissipates just under 50W which is traditionally air cooled using a large heatsink and fan. This is fine for a stand alone computer but when multiple computers are used, eg a Beowulf cluster, the rise in room temperature and hotspots are an increasing problem. Normally air-conditioning is used but this is very inefficient. Cirocco directly cool the heatsink with water which can be cooled remotely and recirculated.
      Air cooling works well enough until you get many hot devices in a small space. Then you have the problem of some running too hot because the air thats supposed to be cooling them is already hot from cooling others.
  7. Mod -5 Don't Let The Other Geeks Know I'm Clueless by nick_davison · · Score: 4, Informative

    For those of use who've grown used to making "Woo, imagine a Beowulf cluster of them!" jokes yet have no clue what a Beowulf cluster actually is, the definition, history and so on is available at:

    NASA's Beowulf site

    In brief overview:
    In the summer of 1994 Thomas Sterling and Don Becker, working at CESDIS under the sponsorship of the ESS project, built a cluster computer consisting of 16 DX4 processors connected by channel bonded Ethernet. They called their machine Beowulf. The machine was an instant success and their idea of providing COTS (Commodity off the shelf) base systems to satisfy specific computational requirements quickly spread through NASA and into the academic and research communities. The development effort for this first machine quickly grew into a what we now call the Beowulf Project. Some of the major accomplishment of the Beowulf Project will be chronicled below, but a non-technical measure of success is the observation that researcher[s(sp)] within the High Performance Computer community are now referring to such machines as "Beowulf Class Cluster Computers." That is, Beowulf clusters are now recognized as genre within the HPC community./i

  8. Slashdotted... by MoTec · · Score: 5, Funny

    Perhaps they should look into using one of these for their webserver.

  9. Don't say it. by SandSpider · · Score: 5, Funny

    You know what I'm talking about. Don't do it.

    --
    There is nothing so good that someone, somewhere, will not hate it.
  10. Re:Mod -5 Don't Let The Other Geeks Know I'm Cluel by Shadow+Wrought · · Score: 4, Funny

    You know, in a way I'm disappointed. I had always hoped to find out that Beowulf Clusters only acheived prominence after having slayed the evil Grendel Clusters in the back of some Scandanavian CompSci lab...

    --
    If brevity is the soul of wit, then how does one explain Twitter?