Cirocco Live Liquid Cooled Rack 119
Mark Grant writes "Cirocco have developed a liquid cooled rack of AMD Duron 1.1Gs in a Beowulf cluster. The rack has been installed in Cambridge University, England and has been under trial since Christmas. The system is being put through its paces running chemical research algorithms.
Critical to Cirocco's liquid cooling system are the hot swappable quick couplings. These allow servers to be disconnected whilst the cooling system is in operation." The graph with live temperature readings is pretty neat.
Just Imagine (Score:5, Funny)
it would be like have a pc.
wouldn't it
Re:Wow! (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Wow! (Score:1)
Hot swappable? (Score:5, Funny)
Let's see ... (Score:1)
hot swappable
quick couplings
Now I feel dirty. In a bad way.
Hmmmmm (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Hmmmmm (Score:2)
Quite Dangerous (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Quite Dangerous (Score:2)
Re:Quite Dangerous (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Quite Dangerous (Score:2)
Re:Quite Dangerous (Score:2)
Each cpu dissipates just under 50W which is traditionally air cooled using a large heatsink and fan. This is fine for a stand alone computer but when multiple computers are used, eg a Beowulf cluster, the rise in room temperature and hotspots are an increasing problem. Normally air-conditioning is used but this is very inefficient.
Cirocco directly cool the heatsink with water which can be cooled remotely and recirculated.
Re:Quite Dangerous (Score:1)
nice rack! (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:nice rack! (Score:1)
Cray used (uses?) a liquid freon system where each board had a mettalic layer that connected into a slot formed with the cooling tubes. Thus "sinking" the unit to the coolant frame itself.
This system (the Cray one) did not "re-plumb" liquid in/out of cases.
So (IMHO) Cray "mastered" the way to do it. This is just another way to attempt the same effect with different hardware.
Re:nice rack! (Score:2, Informative)
Re:nice rack! (Score:1)
Liquid cooled rack? (Score:5, Funny)
Personally, I always thought a liquid cooled rack is what happens when Pamela Anderson spills beer down her shirt...
Re:Liquid cooled rack? (Score:2)
oh yeah, in soviet russia all of us are belong to your base.
Re:Liquid cooled rack? (Score:1)
But seriously, go easy on these jokes. I found out the hard way that nobody but you and me find them funny anymore. My karma's been like a yo-yo lately. (here it goes again!)
P.S. You forgot the beow... never mind.
Fluid connectors (Score:4, Insightful)
Chemical research? (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Chemical research? (Score:2)
maybe... (Score:5, Interesting)
Was going to make a beowulf joke, but then you insensitive clods would mark me redundant (I'm only like the 20th poster, how redundant can I be?)
Re:maybe... (Score:1)
Duron vs. Athlon (Score:2)
Suppose they only run stuff that can fit in the cache size of the Duron, then the extra price for the athlon is a bad idea.
Re:maybe... (Score:3)
Re:maybe... (Score:2)
I'm no expert at this (and I didn't read the entire article), but it by using liquid cooling instead of fans you can stack a lot more CPUs into the same space. Getting rid of the heat would also be easier since you can put the radiator somewhere,
Re:maybe... (Score:1)
Re:maybe... (Score:2)
I have a small $5 aluminum cooler-master heatsink with a underpowered fan on it which is able to keep the CPU comfortably cool (without a case fan)
I suppose it could get a bit tight in a 1u configuration, but anything more dense would probably require special hardware.
Speaking of special hardware, why can't they just squeeze a bunch of mini-itx motherboards into a server ca
Re:maybe... (Score:5, Insightful)
Why 1.1GHz Durons? (Score:2)
Re:maybe... (Score:2)
Re:maybe... (Score:2)
Mod -5 Don't Let The Other Geeks Know I'm Clueless (Score:5, Informative)
NASA's Beowulf site [nasa.gov]
In brief overview:
In the summer of 1994 Thomas Sterling and Don Becker, working at CESDIS under the sponsorship of the ESS project, built a cluster computer consisting of 16 DX4 processors connected by channel bonded Ethernet. They called their machine Beowulf. The machine was an instant success and their idea of providing COTS (Commodity off the shelf) base systems to satisfy specific computational requirements quickly spread through NASA and into the academic and research communities. The development effort for this first machine quickly grew into a what we now call the Beowulf Project. Some of the major accomplishment of the Beowulf Project will be chronicled below, but a non-technical measure of success is the observation that researcher[s(sp)] within the High Performance Computer community are now referring to such machines as "Beowulf Class Cluster Computers." That is, Beowulf clusters are now recognized as genre within the HPC community./i
Re:Mod -5 Don't Let The Other Geeks Know I'm Cluel (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Mod -5 Don't Let The Other Geeks Know I'm Cluel (Score:1)
I think the answer is yes
Re:Mod -5 Don't Let The Other Geeks Know I'm Cluel (Score:1)
Re:Mod -5 Don't Let The Other Geeks Know I'm Cluel (Score:1)
Shows you what I remember from Schweitzer's class.
TTFN
Re:Mod -5 Don't Let The Other Geeks Know I'm Cluel (Score:1)
*runs from the flames*
Re:Mod -5 Don't Let The Other Geeks Know I'm Cluel (Score:3, Funny)
<tongue firmly in cheek>
I'll be gentle, seeing as you're clearly a newbie...
In time, when you've had a chance to read more heated arguments on Slashdot, you'll soon learn that we rarely take the time to actually read the articles. We just get on with ranting on them. I blame Hillary Rosen, the RIAA and Microsoft for that - in no particular order.
Now, if you'll just go to the second doorway down the hall, I hear there's an op
Slashdotted... (Score:5, Funny)
Temp readings (Score:2, Funny)
Even more impressive when slashdotted.
Yeah I Remember Those (Score:4, Funny)
Oh Cirocco? Not Scirocco? Whoops, but why on earth would anyone would dig up that dead convoluted name is beyond me. A few VW enthusiasts might always remember you but I think your just alienating your audience, all naming your company after trade winds.... Maybe iCirocco? Nah.
Well it's clearly obvious... (Score:1, Redundant)
The
1.1ghz chips need liquid cooling?!?!? (Score:4, Insightful)
I've worked with quick-couplings on megawatt lasers, and I can just give em one tip: couplings fail more often than computers. Just wait til they spring a leak because some idiot forgets to twist the ring properly, and he floods the whole rack.
Re:1.1ghz chips need liquid cooling?!?!? (Score:2, Insightful)
Don't say it. (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Don't say it. (Score:2)
Re:Don't say it. (Score:1)
Re:Jobs in computational chemistry (Score:2)
Nice rack! (Score:2)
Did anyone else think... (Score:4, Funny)
...that "Live Liquid Cooled Rack" was some sort of wet T-shirt contest for geeks ?
Seriously though, match this with the IBM Ice-Cube storage cluster [theregister.co.uk] and you really would have one cool machine (ducking).
"In a few years, one storage administrator should be able to manage a petabyte of storage, which is 100 times more than is typical today." - IBM Almaden Research Center [ibm.com]
Why...? (Score:2)
I am thinking something like a front-to-back fan design to blow the hot air out of the 1U cases (and I know those cases are pretty tight and cramped, so intelligent routing of cables, or custom device interconnects wou
Slashdotted? (Score:2)
You can literally watch the slashdot effect on a server this way.
cooling (Score:1)
Why not just install rackmounting rails on the inside of a refrigerator? That's what I would do if I were stupid.
Plwase no beowulf cluster jokes. (Score:1)
Why use water (Score:4, Funny)
Even though the heat capacity of gases is generally larger than liquids, the thermal conductivity of water is about 30 times larger than air. Also, plumbing lets me move the water to exactly where I want the cooling to take place without heating it along the way.
IBM mainframes (ECL-based) used water-cooled plates for the CPU and have spent a lot of design effort on quick-connect couplings that don't leak. I just wish they had transferred some of that knowledge to the Sears washing machine group.
Woah... (Score:1)
How big a cluster? (Score:2)
50 watts? (Score:1)
geuse they know not to put gell
Liquid cooling is cool.... (Score:2, Informative)
Mainframe cooling, again (Score:2)
If cooling is a real problem, the usual solution in dense avionics racks is engineered airflow. All heat sources are measured, and small ducts and diverters are sized and built to deliver air to the key spots, while not wasting it on stuff that doesn't need it. If you're building rackmount servers as a product, it's worth the t
What cooling? (Score:1)
Isn't "cooling" supposed to create more than an accidental 0.5 degree temperature difference?
Durons? (Score:1)