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Immersion Cooling Drives Server Power Densities To Insane New Heights (datacenterfrontier.com)
1sockchuck writes: By immersing IT equipment in liquid coolant, a new data center is reaching extreme power densities of 250 kW per enclosure. At 40 megawatts, the data center is also taking immersion cooling to an entirely new scale, building on a much smaller proof-of-concept from a Hong Kong skyscraper. The facility is being built by Bitcoin specialist BitFury and reflects how the harsh economics of industrial mining have prompted cryptocurrency firms to focus on data center design to cut costs and boost power. But this type of radical energy efficiency may soon be key to America's effort to build an exascale computer and the increasingly extreme data-crunching requirements for cloud and analytics.
...they want their cooling back: Cray-2
I was actually one of the admins for a Cray-2 (and other systems) at NASA LaRC from 1988-1992. It was pretty cool (no pun intended). The chassis was Plexiglas (or something else clear) and you could see the 3D circuit boards immersed in the Fluorinert - which was wicked expensive back then. I always wanted to put some plastic fish inside the system... The system was moved to the Virginia Air and Space Center (VASC) for a while after being decommissioned sometime later.
It must have been something you assimilated. . . .
No, it's a case of the libertarian-loved nongovernment scrip being co-opted by business at the expense of the individual.
Bitcoin mining has reached a point where the lone individual won't really be able to 'win' anymore. Those already wealthy, with access to resources, will find the bulk of the rest of the keys. If Bitcoin is considered money, then these organizations have literally found a way to make money.
On top of that, since corporate taxation is not especially good even with real money, and taxation in-general is even harder when it isn't official currency (see the Whiskey Rebellion) I expect this to be an even easier means for corporations to avoid taxes.
Do not look into laser with remaining eye.
I would think his comment goes to the idea of bitcoin mining, which to my knowledge, serves no other purpose than to prop up bitcoin itself. It's a massive waste of energy on something completely intangible. I'd like to see a more in-depth study, but some estimate that a single bitcoin transaction could power a house for a day and a half (http://motherboard.vice.com/read/bitcoin-is-unsustainable). What a fucking waste. At least folding@home used energy for scholarly purposes.
Two phase cooling eh? I don't know if that's a good idea.
I would contend that it's usually not a good idea to cool something using a liquid when you let that liquid boil when in contact with what you wish to cool. This is especially true for things you wish to keep evenly cool. I understand that you do gain a lot of heat transfer capability by vaporizing the liquid, but you loose the ability to easily keep heat evenly flowing from a surface when you let vapor bubbles form on it. Perhaps you could deal with that issue using conductive materials to spread the heat out (you are going to need some of that anyway) but it might be cheaper to implement a single phase solution. Also, presumably they are suggesting a "closed loop" system for this liquid, where the vapor would need to be recycled by compressing and condensing it back into liquid. This puts the ambient temperature as the lowest you can get the liquid, without some other multi-phase process (and associated expense).
I would think that it would be better to stay a liquid at all times and pump the liquid though a heat exchanger to be cooled using conventional refrigeration methods. You avoid vapor bubbles causing hot spots, only need to come up a suitable liquid based on it's non-reactive nature that will stay liquid and not have to worry about it having the necessary phase change pressure/temperature for your application. Plus, water chillers are already standard fare at current data centers and in industrial cooling equipment. Just pump liquid though the whole thing and push the thermodynamically expensive processes that involve phase changes off onto existing efficient equipment designs which exist. In short, avoid inventing the wheel...
"File to fit, pound to insert, paint to match" - Aircraft Maintenance 101