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Google Demands Higher Chip Temps From Intel
JagsLive writes "When purchasing server processors directly from Intel, Google has insisted on a guarantee that the chips can operate at temperatures five degrees centigrade higher than their standard qualification, according to a former Google employee. This allowed the search giant to maintain higher temperatures within its data centers, the ex-employee says, and save millions of dollars each year in cooling costs."
If you don't have the clout of a Google-sized organization to buy higher-rated chips from Intel, I wonder if you can basically achieve the same thing by underclocking. An underclocked chip will run cooler, but I don't know if it'll run more stably at higher temps, although I think it would.
Does anyone have any experience with doing this?
I think it'd be interesting to see whether the cost savings in power and cooling is offset by the cost of the performance losses.
You see? You see? Your stupid minds! Stupid! Stupid!
Pragmatically, if they can't run cool, then it's more efficient to run them hot than to spend more energy actively cooling them.
If you were blocking sigs, you wouldn't have to read this.
WI'm surprised Google isn't considering moving some of its data centres to Arctic locations where you get cool temperatures year-round.
There is no reason to be surprised. It is cheaper to not move the data center to where it is colder and just make all upgraded hardware use the new chips. Google's budget calls for hardware upgrades already. Upgrading to CPUs with higher temp tolerances would mean they pay the same $X-thousand for the box they would anyway and simply turn the thermostat up.
A net savings.
Two words: "Free Cooling"
The greater the difference between your data centre's output air temperature and whatever passive external cooling system you are pumping it though, the more heat you can dump at zero cost. That's monetary cost as well as the cost to the environment through the energy "wasted" in HVAC systems and the like. Google has a PUE (Power Usage Effectiveness; the ratio of power input to power acutally used for powering production systems) approaching 1.2 vs typical values of around 2.5-3.0 - Microsoft is around 2.75 as I recall - so they are clearly doing something right.
UNIX? They're not even circumcised! Savages!
Most of the power supply systems for my servers, which are HP G3-5 systems of various U sizes, tend to waste more power as temperature goes up.
This has nothing to do with CPU's though. It is the power supplies on the machines. As temperature goes up, efficiency goes down. At around 80 degrees I noticed a significant larger draw on the power supply with my amp meter.
I had a gaming system with two ATI 4870's and the 800 Watt power supply would crash my machine if I did not run the air conditioner and keep the room at 70 degrees after some fairly long Supreme Commander runs.
I noticed that the amperage would go up, and the power output would go down as temperature would go up.
I have not conducted any experiments in a lab setting with this stuff, but from experience, jacking the temperature up usually makes power supplies work harder and makes them less efficient.
-gc
Got Geometrodynamics? Awe, too hard to figure out? Too bad.
This happens with resistors, too. If you want one within 5% of the nominal ohmage, you pay more. If you want want one within 10%, you pay less, but you'll find that they're all either about 10% low or 10% high, with a 'notch' in the center of the distribution. Same production process used, but they skim off the 'good ones' and charge more for them.
PHEM - party like it's 1997-2003!
Legend has it that the Celeron processor began its life as a way for Intel to make money off of the Pentiums that didn't pass quality control. If they sell the low performing processors at a discount, why shouldn't they sell the over performing ones at a premium?
One of our competitors trademarked the term "hypothesis". From now on, we will call them "boneheaded ideas".
Hard disks. In fact, I am typically far more concerned with long-term issues with my data than with the computing itself. Not to mention, the CPU is NOT the only chip that can suffer from heat issues.
Google's chips will be running full throttle/full temp 24/7
Is there any documentation for this?
I seriously find it hard to believe that Google has every processor they own running 24/7 at 100% utilization. Other than the computation problems like SETI and protein folding, most problems are I/O bound, and I would think that the stuff Google does would involve a lot of I/O.
You are correct, or it may not cook correctly at all at the lower temperature even with more time. For example, if you want to boil rice in Guatemala City, you have to sautee it first.
Damn Slashdot's broken Unicode support. There should be an accent in there.
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