Green HPC (energy efficiency, cooling)

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Energy efficiency

Software solutions to energy efficiency

  • PBS Works middleware allows "Green Provisioning" power management facility to switch off idle nodes.
  • gewake allow Sun Grid Engine machines to be shutdown when idle and automatically woken up when needed: https://github.com/opoplawski/gewake

Cooling

Liquid cooling

Liquid cooling has many advantages, which derive from the much higher heat capacity per unit volume of water compared to air (by a factor of 3500 times higher). Liquid cooling implies higher densities, energy savings and the possibility to reuse the thermal energy that the water extracts from the IT equipment. Some additional advantages can be found in terms of lower noise levels, less vibrations and close control of electronics temperatures.

Links:

Hot water cooling

IBM has delivered a first-of-a-kind hot water-cooled supercomputer to the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Zurich (ETH Zurich). The processors and other components in the new high performance computer are cooled with up to 60 degrees C warm water. This is made possible by an innovative cooling system that comprises micro-channel liquid coolers which are attached directly to the processors, where most heat is generated. With this chip-level cooling, the thermal resistance between the processor and the water is reduced to the extent that even cooling water temperatures of up to 60 degrees C ensure that the operating temperatures of the processors remain well below the maximally allowed 85 degrees C. The high input temperature of the coolant results in an even higher-grade heat at the output, which in this case is up to 65 degrees C. Overall, water removes heat 4,000 times more efficiently than air.

Links:

Related material

Webcasts

There are several nice webcasts related to Green HPC on Scientific Computing World:

  • Green computing with GPUs
  • New advances in power and cooling technology
  • Energy efficiency and supercomputing
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