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Intel and SGI Test Full-Immersion Cooling For Servers

Posted by samzenpus on from the cooling-it-down dept.

itwbennett (1594911) writes "Intel and SGI have built a proof-of-concept supercomputer that's kept cool using a fluid developed by 3M called Novec that is already used in fire suppression systems. The technology, which could replace fans and eliminate the need to use tons of municipal water to cool data centers, has the potential to slash data-center energy bills by more than 90 percent, said Michael Patterson, senior power and thermal architect at Intel. But there are several challenges, including the need to design new motherboards and servers."

74 of 102 comments (clear)

  1. Cray-2 by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

    The Cray-2 did this in 1985 using a liquid called Fluorinert also invented by 3M:

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cray-2
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fluorinert

    1. Re:Cray-2 by fahrbot-bot · · Score: 1

      The Cray-2 did this in 1985 using a liquid called Fluorinert also invented by 3M:

      Cray-2
      Fluorinert

      Yup, and I was an admin on one at NASA LaRC from 1988-92. Always wanted to put some fake floaty fish inside the thing, but people have no sense of humor about something that cost ~ $20M.

      --
      It must have been something you assimilated. . . .
    2. Re:Cray-2 by Polo · · Score: 1

      I hope it's cheaper than Fluorinert, which I remember reading was hundreds or thousands of dollars a gallon.

  2. I wonder... by niftymitch · · Score: 1

    3M Novec 649 Engineered Fluid

    Novec 649 fluid is an advanced heat transfer fluid, balancing customer needs for physical, thermal and electrical properties, with favorable environmental properties. Novec 649 fluid is an effective heat transfer fluid with a boiling point of 49C. Novec 649 fluid is useful in heat transfer particularly where non-flammability or environmental factors are a consideration.

    --
    Truth is stranger than fiction, but it is because Fiction is obliged to stick to possibilities; Truth isn't. Mark Twain.
    1. Re:I wonder... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      49C is rather low for a boiling point for this application. Not that I'm terribly familiar with their product lines, but there are several in the 7xxx series that are more likely candidates - some with boiling points better than 100C. Running things hot (within tolerances) would help with the efficiency of heat transfer to the environment as well.

    2. Re:I wonder... by davester666 · · Score: 1

      Where did you see that it was Novec 649? There are a whole bunch of different 'Novec' engineered fluids... They could be referring to Novec 1230, which is a fire suppression fluid [mentioned in TFS]...that one doesn't seem very healthy to be around.

      --
      Sleep your way to a whiter smile...date a dentist!
    3. Re:I wonder... by grouchomarxist · · Score: 4, Informative

      None of the articles I've seen mentioned which version of Novec is being used. They have a great variety: http://solutions.3m.com/wps/po...

    4. Re:I wonder... by gl4ss · · Score: 4, Interesting

      it can be an advantage, as long as it doesn't break down on boiling.

      that way the cpu can stay at 49c and the system can be built to not require pumps, just by piping the steam to a cooling tower and from tower back to servers. however of course this needs redesign of the server and components, like said.

      --
      world was created 5 seconds before this post as it is.
    5. Re:I wonder... by K.+S.+Kyosuke · · Score: 2

      49C is rather low for a boiling point for this application.

      Is it? Phase transitions generally require quite a lot of energy. It is my understanding that if you allow the vapors to condense externally and return the liquid back, you'll get a significantly improved heat transfer. In fact, this is why heat pipes work so well.

      --
      Ezekiel 23:20
    6. Re:I wonder... by EngineeringStudent · · Score: 1

      The refrigerant in most air conditioner systems boils at about 45 F. The ability to transfer heat to the outside world depends on the compressor power - not on what the boiling temperature is. Because of the temperature and chemical compatibility with systems that run R-134a, there are going to be a lot of hardware cost reductions, multi-source suppliers, and existing infrastructure to support that technology. That boiling point yields a better technology ecosystem.

    7. Re:I wonder... by niftymitch · · Score: 1

      Where did you see that it was Novec 649? There are a whole bunch of different 'Novec' engineered fluids... They could be referring to Novec 1230, which is a fire suppression fluid [mentioned in TFS]...that one doesn't seem very healthy to be around.

      SWAG... scientific wild ass guess.
      I looked at the Novec product line and picked on that I would try first.
      Note I changed the comment subject to "I wonder" not "I know".

      --
      Truth is stranger than fiction, but it is because Fiction is obliged to stick to possibilities; Truth isn't. Mark Twain.
    8. Re:I wonder... by mmell · · Score: 1
      The effect of boiling is that thermal energy is carried away with the (now gas) component of the coolant. The hot gas bubbles up, leaving the cooler liquid enveloping your circuit.

      Put another way: boiling is nothing more than incredibly fast evaporation. That's exactly how sweat cools a body - by evaporation of a fluid on the surface of the object to be cooled. Mechanical removal of heat by a physical process - highly efficient.

    9. Re:I wonder... by mpe · · Score: 1

      Phase transitions generally require quite a lot of energy.

      Phase translations involve energy refered to as "latent heat". However the latent heat of boilng and that of freezing (along with the specific heat capacity in any phase) depend very much on the substance involved,

    10. Re:I wonder... by Polo · · Score: 1

      It seems to be 99kJ/kg at it's boiling point of 45C/120F

      For all practical purposes, I just thought coolants increase in temperature to their boiling point and just stay there (or a little higher if under pressure like a car radiator or pressure cooker)

      That would mean systems with this fluid would reach 120F and basically go no further (unless ALL the coolant boiled off, which I doubt would happen)

    11. Re:I wonder... by Polo · · Score: 1

      looks like the specs for both of them are about the same . 49C/120F boiling point, 88kJ/kg specific heat.

    12. Re:I wonder... by OdinOdin_ · · Score: 1

      Yes boiling at this temperature is useful. Makes it easier to separate the hot from the cold, the equipment can be immersed in the liquid form, heat it up and it automatically separates the part that needs cooling and re-condensing.

      Transporting the hot part becomes easy, the system has a natural pump cycling the atoms around driven off the heat. So all that heat energy is more usefully absorbed by the system (into kinetic energy), you are not putting additional energy in (such as a liquid pump) which also requires cooling itself.

  3. Not your father's SGI by jones_supa · · Score: 4, Informative

    A small history lesson for those who don't know, this is not the same SGI (or Silicon Graphics) than of the graphics workstation fame. This one is Rackable Systems which acquired the assets of the original SGI in 2009 (and SGI Japan in 2011).

    1. Re:Not your father's SGI by serviscope_minor · · Score: 4, Informative

      It's also not the SGI that owned CRAY in the past, who used to make supercomputers immersed in 3M fluids.

      Anyway the summary desn't quite ring true. The fluids are great at getting heat efficiently away from the servers (better than air, if rather less convenient), but it still hsa to go somewhere after that.

      --
      SJW n. One who posts facts.
    2. Re:Not your father's SGI by zoid.com · · Score: 1

      Ah.. My first thought was "SGI is still around?"

      --
      Zoid.com
    3. Re:Not your father's SGI by unixisc · · Score: 1

      I really miss SGI. Wish at least the SGI that made Itanic supercomputers was still around.

    4. Re:Not your father's SGI by jones_supa · · Score: 1

      By the way, the finally stopped releasing bug fixes for IRIX last December. The company still plans to keep phone tech support going on. They say that the MIPS/IRIX products continue to be a viable solution for many customers, with millions of dollars invested over the years.

    5. Re:Not your father's SGI by TheGratefulNet · · Score: 2

      I worked at SGI for a short whole, at the mtn view campus. before it was infested and taken over by google...

      SGI was one of the coolest companies in the bay area, or even the world. I can't begin to describe the joy of working there and of just *being* there.

      really sad when they closed down. also sad when Sun closed down (I also worked there, too).

      why do we lose good companies and piece-of-shit things like facebook and twitter are the 'new computer economy'. we went backwards quite a bit, it seems. don't design hardware, just try to be a mega-marketing firm, which is all social networking is, at its core. don't build computer, send more ADVERTISING and do more SPYING on users. yeah, great going, silicon valley... ;(

      --

      --
      "It is now safe to switch off your computer."
    6. Re:Not your father's SGI by unixisc · · Score: 1

      I completely agree with you. How is it assumed that the Taiwanese/Chinese will build computers for ever, and nothing new in computers needs to be designed here in the US?

    7. Re:Not your father's SGI by jasonla · · Score: 1

      Thank you. I would think the current editors pay a little more attention... Is this the new Slashdot? Have I been away for so long?

    8. Re:Not your father's SGI by jones_supa · · Score: 1

      I don't see how the editors made any mistake here.

    9. Re:Not your father's SGI by unixisc · · Score: 1

      They ought to take one of the BSDs - F/N/O and finetune their ports to their legacy platforms, so that their customers have a path to move to. In this, they could also develop Irix jails under BSD for software that just has to have Irix. That gives their customers a migration route for their existing hardware that continues to serve them well. Whenever they die, things could then move to a BSD on x64 platforms.

    10. Re:Not your father's SGI by jones_supa · · Score: 1

      That makes absolutely no sense. :) There is almost nothing left of the original SGI. Most of their customers have moved to OS X and Linux a long time ago.

    11. Re:Not your father's SGI by unixisc · · Score: 1

      This is about the people still using those purple Irix boxes.

    12. Re:Not your father's SGI by armanox · · Score: 1

      I wouldn't have opposed seeing a new release of IRIX. I still love my Octane.

      --
      I'm starting to think GNU is the problem with "GNU/Linux" these days.
  4. Too bad... by Sable+Drakon · · Score: 1

    There's also the fact that Fluorinert is potentially toxic, but it's also a greenhouse hazard. One would hope that 3M learned their lessons in the development of Novec and it's not an environmental hazard.

    --
    The Amarri pray for god, the Caldari pray for profit. the Gallente pray for peace, but the Minmatar pray their ships hol
    1. Re:Too bad... by fnj · · Score: 1

      There's also the fact that Fluorinert is potentially toxic, but it's also a greenhouse hazard. One would hope that 3M learned their lessons in the development of Novec and it's not an environmental hazard.

      All right, I'll bite. Aside from "OMG, it is, gasp, a CHEMICAL", if it is inert, how can it be toxic? From the MSDS for Fluorinert FC-40:

      "Not classified as hazardous according to OSHA Hazard Communication Standard, 29 CFR 1910.1200."
      "No occupational exposure limit values exist for any of the components listed in Section 3 of this SDS."
      "Skin protection is not required."
      "Inhalation: Vapors from heated material may cause irritation of the respiratory system. Signs/symptoms may include cough, sneezing, nasal discharge, headache, hoarseness, and nose and throat pain."
      "Skin Contact: Contact with the skin during product use is not expected to result in significant irritation."
      "Eye Contact: Vapors from heated material may cause eye irritation. Signs/symptoms may include redness, swelling, pain, tearing, and blurred or hazy vision."

      Note, when they are talking about "heated", they are talking about heating to well above any proper operating temperature - greater than 200 C. The stuff CAN break down chemically under such conditions, and noxious/toxic products result. More or less the same as any fluorocarbon, including the refrigerant in your refrigerator.

      It is non flammable, period. There is no flash point.

      As for the GHG designation, absolutely true. However, essentially no evaporation of Fluorinert into the open should occur in a properly designed and maintained system.

  5. What about maintenance costs? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

    Many years ago I invested in a Hardcore Computer Reactor system. This was a giant custom built computer that had both the motherboard and GPUs submerged in a proprietary non-conductive coolant. It weighs over a hundred pounds filled, and they still needed pumps inside it to direct the coolant across a bunch of purpose built water blocks to extract heat from the hottest components (since liquid convection alone was not enough).

    About a year ago I had to replace the motherboard (which is a proprietary part). I can't even begin to tell you what a gigantic pain in the ass this was. There is a ton of plumbing running around inside the system that you have to worry about, and beyond that the entire compute module comes out of the coolant dripping wet, so you can't just pop it out and chuck it down on your desk. I had to break out a pair of rubberized gloves just to service the damned thing since it became obvious that the boards weren't going to dry themselves just sitting there- the coolant doesn't evaporate at all and you can't just take a towel to the raw PCB to clean it off. I landed up lining the inside of a large plastic bin with antistatic bags and doing the procedure there, which still made one hell of a mess.

    I still run that system, but if anything else ever breaks I'm probably going to sell it off rather then try to fix it again. I honestly can't imagine trying to deal with that sort of a setup on a datacenter scale. General liquid cooling is easy enough to deal with since you can just disconnect the cooling lines and pull out a module (which is precisely what IBM does with their extreme high-end end PowerPC based servers). Submerging the entire PCB is nasty business, and I wouldn't want to be the tech who has to go through that amount of trouble on a weekly or monthly basis.

    1. Re:What about maintenance costs? by whois · · Score: 2

      While I don't doubt your experiences were sucky, I think this could be overcome if they designed the computers and the datacenter with it in mind. You could make the boards be pullable cards from above. Depending on the size of the chassis they might use a robot crane to retrieve the cards or it might be by hand (the crane would mean the entire datacenter floor could be liquid and the cards would be brought to a place where they could be serviced without messing up the place)

      As far as the plumbing getting in the way, I imagine that would be something they would have to address before this became practical. Most of it could be routed according to purpose so it doesn't obstruct but if the CPU board needed active cooling I think there would be more problems like you described.

      If it saves enough money people will do it no matter the mess. They might make sealed pods that need to be sent back to the manufacturer for repair.

    2. Re:What about maintenance costs? by chuckinator · · Score: 1

      No way, chief. Datacenters are designed to be cost efficient, too. That automatic card pulling robot is likely to cost more than an entire row of server racks, and the servers themselves will be ridiculously expensive from custom hardware design and unorthodox cooling systems. What you'll really see is a traditional datacenter running on commodity hardware with humans doing all the manual maintenance. If there's a glut of money for crazy stuff, they'll invest it in either more servers, bigger networking equipment, or additional NOC staff.

  6. Cylon Hybrid by abies · · Score: 1

    http://en.battlestarwiki.org/w...

    Not a new concept, Cylons are using it for 3000 years already.

  7. I doubt it by enriquevagu · · Score: 4, Interesting

    (sorry for the duplicated posting; the previous one was cut because of problems with the html marks)

    In order to obtain a 90% reduction in the energy bill, cooling must account for 90% of the power of the DC. This implies a PUE >= 10. As a reference, 5 years ago virtually any DC had a PUE lower than 3. Nowadays, PUE lower than 1.15 can be obtained easily. As a referecence, Facebook publishes the instantaneous PUE of one of its DC in Prineville, which at the moment is 1.05. This implies that any savings in cooling would reduce the bill, at much, in a factor of 1.05 (1/1.05 = 0.9523).

    On the other hand, I believe that this is not the first commertial offer for a liquid-cooled server, Intel was already considering two years ago, and the idea has been discussed in other forums for several years. I can't remember right now which company that was actually selling these solutions, but I believe it was already in the market.

  8. Overclockers have been doing it for ages by jonwil · · Score: 1

    If you search for "computer immersion cooling" with Google it will throw up a bunch of people (and companies) doing PC systems totally immersed in mineral oil and things as a way to get even more power out of a system (even more than regular liquid cooling gets you)

    1. Re:Overclockers have been doing it for ages by Mashiki · · Score: 3, Interesting

      Sure, mineral oil, cooking oil, fluorinert distilled water, bunch of other esoteric fluids. The real thing that it comes down to the heat transfer between the component and the fluid itself. And this newer stuff is apparently leaps above flurorinert, especially besides that it won't kill you quite so quickly and won't destroy the ozone layer quite so badly. You thought that freon was bad? Fluorinert makes freon look like a glass of water in terms of reactivity.

      --
      Om, nomnomnom...
    2. Re:Overclockers have been doing it for ages by Chas · · Score: 5, Interesting

      Yep. Got to fiddle around with Fluorinert cooling years ago.

      Interesting, just not very practical.

      You really DO need a fully sealed system and ostensibly clean-room assembly. Because, while the coolant itself is non-conductive, any detritus that accumulates in the fluid after settling out of the environment ISN'T. That's the main thing about water (straight H2O) isn't conductive. It's all the other things in the water, minerals, dust, etc that's doing the conduction.

      Also, as noted, there's STILL going to be use of fans and water. Because you still need systems that extract the thermal energy from the liquid medium. You simply remove them from the main system chassis.

      It also doesn't change the fact that it's still a TERRIBLY inefficient way to cool the system. Unlike water cooling loops, where you have no more than maybe a pint or so of fluid cooling the major heat sources in the system, you have QUARTS of fluid basically covering everything. And you really have no good flow control, other than extremely high volume fluid exchange, which is energy inefficient in and of itself.

      That's PROBABLY what a lot of the board re-engineering is about. Centralizing all the thermally active devices into a centralized area to limit the volume of immersion coolant required and to simplify flow control.

      --


      Chas - The one, the only.
      THANK GOD!!!
    3. Re:Overclockers have been doing it for ages by Megol · · Score: 2

      <quote><p>Sure, mineral oil, cooking oil, fluorinert  distilled water, bunch of other esoteric fluids.  The real thing that it comes down to the heat transfer between the component and the fluid itself.  And this newer stuff is apparently leaps above flurorinert, especially besides that it won't kill you quite so quickly and won't destroy the ozone layer quite so badly.  You thought that freon was bad?  Fluorinert makes freon look like a glass of water in terms of reactivity.</p></quote>

      Eh, no. While it isn't the nicest fluid available it is pretty much inert under normal circumstances,which strangely is the reason why the name ends with -inert.

    4. Re:Overclockers have been doing it for ages by Chas · · Score: 3, Informative

      There's still a minimum conductivity in molar water. But it's several orders of magnitude lower than than tap or bottled water.

      Again, primary conductivity of water is via impurities in the water, not the water itself.

      --


      Chas - The one, the only.
      THANK GOD!!!
    5. Re:Overclockers have been doing it for ages by Rich0 · · Score: 1

      "Molar water?" Even The Google has no idea what that is.

      Perhaps you meant "pure water" or just "water?"

      In any case, the resistivity is about 18 Mcm, which is pretty high. I would think that almost all the conductivity comes from H3O+ / OH- ions dissolved in the water, due to dissociation (which is why pure water has a pH of 7).

      I'd think that impurities in an organic solvent of some kind would be far less of a problem than impurities in water. Water is a very polar solvent, and thus strongly promotes ionization of salts/etc. If you sprinkle salt in water you end up with sodium and chloride ions in solution, which are VERY conductive. If you sprinkle salt in toluene it will just sink to the bottom. Now, lots of organic compounds will dissolve just fine in toluene, but I imagine they'd make poor conductors.

      That said, I can certainly believe that impurities would be a problem. A tiny spec of metal floating in the coolant could easily find its way into contact with a circuit of some kind, perhaps even inside a chip. I imagine that this sort of thing is much less likely to happen with air, which is much less viscous and thus can't hold anything but the lightest particles in suspension.

    6. Re:Overclockers have been doing it for ages by dargaud · · Score: 1

      From my dim recollection, it's the CO2 in the air which gets in the water, acidifies it and make it more conducive by orders of magnitude.

      --
      Non-Linux Penguins ?
    7. Re:Overclockers have been doing it for ages by bobbied · · Score: 1

      "Molar water?" Even The Google has no idea what that is.

      Perhaps you meant "pure water" or just "water?"

      I think that's what he means. The problem is that water is VERY reactive and is really an excellent solvent. Pure water has a fairly high PH, which means that it will leach (dissolve) most metals over time an picks up ions. As you point out, it only takes a few ions dissolved in water and it becomes an excellent conductor.

      As such, water is an extremely poor choice for cooling electronics. It might be environmentally safe, but it's pretty much not going to be an insulator if it is exposed to anything metal. Coating everything in plastic might be an option, but that defeats the purpose by impeding heat transfer.

      I like mineral oil myself. Not very environmentally friendly and really messy, but easy to get, it can transfer a lot of heat and doesn't react with most things electronic..

      --
      "File to fit, pound to insert, paint to match" - Aircraft Maintenance 101
    8. Re:Overclockers have been doing it for ages by sootman · · Score: 1

      If you won't believe some random guy on Slashdot, will you believe some random guy on Wikipedia?

      "Pure water has a low electrical conductivity, but this increases with the dissolution of a small amount of ionic material such as sodium chloride."

      Yes, pure water has very low conductivity. The reason you always hear "OMG NOES don't get electronics wet!" because all the water you encounter in day-to-day life is nowhere near pure. Tap water and bottled water are safe from a human-consumption point-of-view but that is very different from chemically "pure" water.

      See also http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/P...

      --
      Dear Slashdot: next time you want to mess with the site, add a rich-text editor for comments.
    9. Re:Overclockers have been doing it for ages by SuseLover · · Score: 1

      Sure, mineral oil, cooking oil, fluorinert distilled water, bunch of other esoteric fluids. The real thing that it comes down to the heat transfer between the component and the fluid itself. And this newer stuff is apparently leaps above flurorinert, especially besides that it won't kill you quite so quickly and won't destroy the ozone layer quite so badly. You thought that freon was bad? Fluorinert makes freon look like a glass of water in terms of reactivity.

      HUH? Kill you? Flourinert is just what it means, it's inert! It's what the medical community was been playing with years ago in an attempt to treat lung infections, you can breath it, like in the move "The Abyss" where they dunk his rat in the tank (they actually did that). It IS slightly toxic and is probably one of the reasons it never made into actual medical use.

      Toxicity Profile Fluorinert liquid FC-70 is non-irritating to the eyes and skin, and is practically non- toxic orally. The product also demonstrates very low acute and sub-chronic inhalation toxicity. A Material Safety Data Sheet is available upon request.

      Although you are correct about it's greenhouse potential, it's vapors are extremely dense and thus relatively easy to contain.

      I used to work with the stuff doing vapor phase soldering on specialized components.

    10. Re:Overclockers have been doing it for ages by Mashiki · · Score: 1

      HUH? Kill you? Flourinert is just what it means, it's inert!

      There's plenty of inert things that will kill you in a painful manner.

      --
      Om, nomnomnom...
  9. Re:I doubt it by enriquevagu · · Score: 1

    This post is incomplete because of problems with html markings. Please see the complete post below (and mod this one down!)

  10. Challenges by wonkey_monkey · · Score: 1

    But there are several challenges, including the need to design new motherboards and servers.

    Swapping out that faulty network card gets to be a bitch.

    (might need a bit of context; something goes wrong with the super-cooled computers and Chris Evans has to dive in and fix it. Then he dies)

    --
    systemd is Roko's Basilisk.
  11. How about Silicone oil ? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    Silicone oil is not flammable, can withstand a lot of heat, excellent heat transfer characteristic, doesn't conduct electricity ... and furthermore, Silicone oil is CHEAP !!

    Can Silicone oil be used in similar operation ?

    1. Re:How about Silicone oil ? by SuricouRaven · · Score: 4, Interesting

      Yes, it can. I've got a little bitcoin miner chip running right now as a proof of this. I'm not a bitcoin enthusiast, just wanted something hot and expendable to test immersion cooling on.

      There is one downside: Viscosity. It's thick stuff, so it takes a powerful pump to keep it actively circulating. It also tends to pool in spaces underneath components and anywhere not exposed to easy circulation, impeding cooling.

    2. Re:How about Silicone oil ? by advid.net · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Their fluid is boiling, phase transition takes a lot of heat out without pumping anything.
      If not, you need to pump fluid between boards, this require more space and energy, even more with a thicker fluid.

    3. Re:How about Silicone oil ? by roger_that · · Score: 1

      My experience with silicone oil was that it was very _thin_, and tended to try to creep out of its containers (lubricant for the heads on a drum recorder, back in the 70's and 80's). We weren't using it for heat transfer, just lubrication, and used cotton wicks to pull the oil out of the tray and apply it to the drum (no pump required).

    4. Re:How about Silicone oil ? by SuricouRaven · · Score: 1

      Your oil must have shorter chains than mine. Much like hydrocarbon oil, it comes in a variety of thicknesses and other properties depending on chain length. I thought I had one of the shorter mixes, but not the shortest.

    5. Re:How about Silicone oil ? by Polo · · Score: 1

      Their fluid is boiling, phase transition takes a lot of heat out without pumping anything.

      That's the key point.

      If you have a pot on your stove filled with water at 211 degrees F, it will absorb 1000 calories and then the pot will be at 212 F.
      But then the pot will absorb 540,000 calories before it gets to 213 F.

  12. Re:I doubt it by Megol · · Score: 1

    While 90% is a lot your calculations doesn't take into account that lowering temperature also lowers power consumed for processing due to leakage reductions and other effects.Look at  http://www.realworldtech.com/supercomputers-cooling/

  13. For another 90% reduction by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    Get rid of dynamic languages (like PHP which recompiles on every pageload) for web apps and use properly compiled ones.

    1. Re:For another 90% reduction by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      Agreed, using dynamic languages is hands down the biggest power waster.

    2. Re:For another 90% reduction by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      Web developers are too dumb to operate a compiler.

    3. Re:For another 90% reduction by PPH · · Score: 1

      We'll just use JavaScript and generate all the heat on the client's systems.

      --
      Have gnu, will travel.
  14. Back to the 1950s! by dbIII · · Score: 1

    Transformer oil - move out!

    1. Re:Back to the 1950s! by bobbied · · Score: 1

      Transformer oil - move out!

      Fast forward to the 80's and please ditch the PCB's. Just switch to mineral oil. Costs a bit more, but does the same job.

      --
      "File to fit, pound to insert, paint to match" - Aircraft Maintenance 101
    2. Re:Back to the 1950s! by PPH · · Score: 1

      Transformer oil? Not a good idea.

      --
      Have gnu, will travel.
  15. Great , more fluorocarbons by Viol8 · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Even though according to wonkypedia it has low GW potential and doesn't damage ozone, do we really want to be manufacturing more fluorinated hydrocarbons which almost never decay in the enviroment by themselves and just build up over time in the soil, plants and eventually us?

  16. Re:I doubt it by ericloewe · · Score: 1

    That effect is minimal and would never account for such a large difference.

  17. Strange method of water cooling... by YoungManKlaus · · Score: 1

    Seriously, using the water and then dumping it? Why not just cool down the water (by using a passive radiator) and reuse it? I know at least one datacenter that does exactly this.

  18. Those numbers are complete B.S. by sirwired · · Score: 2

    Air cooling is inefficient, but it's not so horrible that that inefficiency alone accounts for 90% of data center power usage. Heat is heat, and Watts is Watts; they gotta go somewhere.

    And the "tons of water" that data centers use is generally used to spray the outdoor condenser (think cooling tower at a power plant); changing the servers to liquid cooling won't fix that.

    Liquid cooling makes less sense for smaller servers, as going to all the trouble to plumb a pizza box is generally more trouble than it's worth. Big Iron is already frequently liquid cooled, if not in an immersion bath.

    1. Re:Those numbers are complete B.S. by bobbied · · Score: 1

      changing the servers to liquid cooling won't fix that.

      Not that I disagree on most of what you said, but on this point I think there is a possible efficiency gain. What we do today is pump cool air into systems and cool the air to 70 degrees F using standard Air Conditioning systems. AC systems use a liquid phase change process, fans and compressors which take large amounts of power to run.

      If we can design liquid cooled systems that operate at higher temperatures, and get that temperature significantly above what you can reliably get from a water evaporator, you might be able to avoid the whole AC (phase change liquid cooling) systems and their power consumption by directly cooling a liquid. Avoiding the phase change AC process will require that the hot liquid temperature to be in excess of 120 degrees F and means the hardware will be seeing at least that temperature internally. But this higher working temperature would allow us to dump the heat directly into the ambient air by building heat exchangers which where big enough, or by using evaporating water to cool the fluid. The trick is to get the temperature differential high enough between inside the server and outdoors so we don't have to employ traditional AC methods that involve the phase change of a refrigerants, compressors and fans.

      --
      "File to fit, pound to insert, paint to match" - Aircraft Maintenance 101
  19. Re:I doubt it by Megol · · Score: 1

    True. Don't know where the 90% figure comes from but it's either bullshit or fantasies.

  20. Back to the 1980s! by VortexCortex · · Score: 1

    Transformer oil - move out!

    Man, these greasy energon cubes are more than meets the eye, Optimus.

    I thought you had a taste for crunchy fried things, Bumblebee?

    When in Rome, do as the Romulans!

    Shut Up Starscream!

  21. Re:I doubt it by ericloewe · · Score: 1

    Bullshit fantasy, most likely.

  22. Whoopdee doo... by dafiremaster · · Score: 1

    http://www.datacenterknowledge... It's been done before.

  23. Hope they're not trying to patent it by Khyber · · Score: 1

    I'd been talking about Novec 1230 being used as a computer coolant for years on this site. Prior art all over the fucking place.

    --
    Still waiting on Serviscope_minor to wake up to fucking reality and realize that Jessica Price isn't going to fuck him.
  24. If I had points I’d mod you up. by qubex · · Score: 1

    But I don’t so I’ll have to hope some mod heed my request.

    --
    "Place me in the company of those who seek Truth, but deliver me from those who believe to have found it."