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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: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cray-2
"INSANE" new heights?
Has Slashdot been sold to the Gawker network now?
-Styopa
The difference with this approach is two-phase cooling, where they're actually boiling the heat transfer fluid. That can remove heat a lot more quickly, as long as you can keep a few issues under control:
1) Getting a working fluid with an appropriate boiling point and otherwise acceptable physical parameters (non-flammable, doesn't dissolve your circuitry, etc). 3M has already stepped up to the plate on that.
2) Recondensing the vapor fast enough. This is a lot easier than cooling the circuits directly.
3) Preventing the hot chips from forming a vapor barrier, which insulates the chips from the coolant. The Leidenfrost effect is an example of this, but you can lose efficiency long before you reach the droplets-skittering-around level, especially if there are lots of nooks and crannies where bubbles can get stuck. Presumably the designers have handled this as well.
If they go with a transparent enclosure and some gratuitous lighting, this could become the new mad-scientist/Big Scary Computer visual trope. Let's face it, lab coats, blinking lights and reel-to-reel tape drives are really tired...
The inherent value from some mineral from the ground is exactly zero too.
It is all about scarcity and the value we place on things.
My eyes reflect the stars and a smile lights up my face.
Which sucker trying to front run suckers can I front run this nanosecond.
Better hurricane models (the current prediction technology had the worst hurricane on record cause -zero- deaths in Mexico.)
That was caused by sensational journalism rather than bad models. Although Patricia was a record storm out at sea, models showed that it would lose energy as it passed over cooler waters close to the coast. The models correctly predicted that the winds would drop from 200mph to about 165 by the time it came ashore.
The next big use for large machines is HFT. A microsecond or two on a fast pipe can mean millions in stock gains.
The glory days of HFT are in the past. Speed is no longer an advantage when everyone is doing it. Besides, HFT needs fast pipes, but doesn't really need a lot of computation.
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.
Most minerals have intrinsic utility. Gold is useful as both a conductor and as a reflective coating. Silver is useful in various chemical compounds. Platinum and iridium are very useful catalysts.
A better comparison would have been to fiat currency, which is equally useless except as a means of economic exchange.
It's not really a law, but more of a set of guidelines... Moore or less.... He said so himself.
"File to fit, pound to insert, paint to match" - Aircraft Maintenance 101
The inherent value from some mineral from the ground is exactly zero too.
Gold mining is a filthy business. It causes extensive erosion, silted creeks and rivers, and mercury poisoning. Bitcoin mining is far better for the environment, and most of the electricity used comes from clean and cheap hydro-power.
You can make bitcoin as scarce as you want. Until I can cut ceramic with it I think diamonds are more valuable.
Now you are right in case of pretty things for prettyness, but minerals have properties that make them useful for a lot of different applications. For instance gold is a noble element and thus has great corrosion resistance. Platinum while great for making nice looking rings is also a great catalyst for chemical reactions. While bitcoin's scarcity and value is based on what someone thinks about it, the scarcity and value of minerals is anchored in human's continuous demand for them.
Gold is useful as both a conductor and as a reflective coating. Silver is useful in various chemical compounds. Platinum and iridium are very useful catalysts.
Those things are only useful for people who need/want them. There is no intrinsic value in anything.
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
An interesting architecture might combine a processing unit with a solar panel on a simple stand. Large numbers of these units could could then be placed in a desert area, communicating via a mesh network, with almost no additional infrastructure, not even roads. Coining cryptocurrency and code breaking do not require much interprocessor communication. Energy costs would be zero. There would be no need to locate near a power transmission grid, so the most desolate desert areas might be suitable, minimizing land costs. Robotic dune buggies or drones could be used to dust off the panels periodically. and remove units as needed for repair or hardware upgrade. If batteries get cheap enough, they could be incorporated to allow processing to continue at night, perhaps at a faster clock due to easier cooling. Human staffing might be limited to security and backup maintenance.
The whole system results in a massive waste of energy for an inefficient currency.
Cite? Transactions with traditional currencies aren't free, you know. The bookkeeping, auditing, forensics and prosecutions needed to keep normal transactions sufficiently secure do have a significant real-world cost. Not so much in energy, I'd expect, but much more in person-hours. How does bitcoin compare, all costs considered? I don't know. If you know of some research that tries to answer this question with data, I'd very much like to see it.
Note to ACs: I usually delete AC replies without reading them. If you want to talk to me, log in.
Those things are only useful for people who need/want them. There is no intrinsic value in anything.
That they're useful for people who need/want them is the definition of intrinsic value. If you're dependent on other people to need/want it like fiat currency or bitcoins, then it has no intrinsic value. The reason gold is so successful is because it doesn't decay and is easily portable so you can store it under your bed for fifty years or bring it anywhere to whoever needs it which makes it easy to pass along. Of course it's theoretically possible that gold once had value but today we're only trading it around but nobody wants gold except for trade. The use in industrial applications and jewelry suggest otherwise though, as long as there's end users they'll come around to using your supply. Or you can at least sell it from generation to generation until somebody does.
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