Quebec Data Center Built In a Silo 113
1sockchuck writes "A supercomputing center in Quebec has transformed a huge concrete silo into the CLUMEQ Colossus, a data center filled with HPC clusters. The silo, which is 65 feet high with two-foot thick concrete walls, previously housed a Van de Graaf accelerator dating to the 1960s. It was redesigned to house three floors of server cabinets, arranged so cold air can flow from the outside of the facility through the racks and return via an interior 'hot core.' The construction and operation of the unique facility (PDF) are detailed in a presentation from CLUMEQ."
And you thought your computer was a tower (Score:5, Funny)
Size DOES matter.
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Well the silo houses just a bit more than half(2700sq.ft) compared to the other location(it's apparently a multi-campus project, the other campus has 5000sq.ft) not sure if that's an academic requirement. As per your comment though, haven't met a computer that didn't fear comparison with an office tower....
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Infobunker [infobunker.com] 4tw. Again.
They just opened a pit to be exposed to outside air in the winter which will create a frozen ballast. They are expecting to not have to turn on the coolers for a month on each side of winter. Which means all winter long, 1 month of fall and 1 month of spring, they do don't need to run their coolers.
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It's not THAT big, although it's still very impressive:
http://maps.google.com/maps?t=h&ll=46.780896,-71.277843&spn=0.00137,0.003484&z=19
SHPEGS (Score:3, Interesting)
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Of course knowing that SHPEGS is your concept puts your advocacy in a different light.
I notice in the two years since SHPEGS was featured on Slashdot [slashdot.org] you don't appear to have much progress.
Another case of Life immitating art (Score:1, Funny)
Hmm,
Looks like they read too much UserFriendly...
http://ars.userfriendly.org/cartoons/?id=20010611
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Looks like they read too much UserFriendly...
Thanks, mate. I just blew another hour.
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Sun's future plans are even bigger (Score:5, Funny)
Sun spokesperson Dr. C. Forbin announced a second center would be rolling out on the island of Crete after the population has been relocated.
Re:Sun's future plans are even bigger (Score:5, Informative)
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This is the voice of World Control. I bring you Java.
So that you learn by experience that I do not tolerate interference, I will now rewrite the Linux kernel as an Eclipse plugin using a Cloud-enabled Web 2.0 XML service-oriented architecture frontend to an IBM mainframe running COBOL.
You will come to defend me with a fervor based upon the most enduring trait in mankind: cubicles.
To be dominated by me is not as bad for the future of mankind as to be dominated by the lolcats, who by the way, have already got
But, does it run... (Score:2, Interesting)
...on poutine?
Re:But, does it run... (Score:5, Funny)
Nothing runs on poutine. Try this: Eat a bunch of it and try running. Guarantee YOU aren't going to run on it, and you're DESIGNED to convert food into fuel.
Unless, by "run", you mean "collapse and expire due to massive arterial blockage", in which Quebecois is a somewhat more condensed language than I gave it credit for.
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Isn't that what Poutine translates to from Quebecois to English??
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Not sure, but it is tasty stuff, I love i.. (ugg, arrgh, ook) *collapses*
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Nonsense - real poutine [wikipedia.org] is made with french fries fried in oil with at least 100,000 km on it - you WILL have the runs after eating enough of it ...
Seriously, poutine made with fries done in new oil, cooked properly (fry them, take them out, drain, refry so the outside is crip and the inside is cooked), top with curd cheese and poutine sauce is awesome. The only thing better is Italian poutine - poutine with a thick and meaty spaghetti
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./ News for Poutine Lovers.
I'm in Vancouver and the Poutine just isn't the same as in Quebec. I'm going to have to go there this summer (pour de la bonne Poutine!). Any ideas what restaurants serve the Italian poutine? I haven't seen or heard of it before. Is it a Montreal or maybe Toronto only thing (w/ the strong Italian communities?)?
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The best I've ever had was a restaurant on the south shore (right on route 132 in Delson), but you can get it at a lot of places.
The trick, of course, is to know WHEN to go, because the quality can be variable at any place, depending on the cook.
Wasnt that easy (Score:2)
Maybe not so new (Score:1, Informative)
The article is titled: "Wild New Design: Data Center in A Silo"
Kind of reminds me of a supersized Cray 1 (minus the bowl_of_spaghetti wiring in the middle.)
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Why on earth would they go against the laws of physics and push the cold air up and the warm air down? This would have been a much better des
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if you think about it, it does make sense. the cold air will heat up after going through the racks, and that hot air will escape from the top. probably easier to push the hot air down once it is in the 'heat core' than it would be pushing hot air down the silo
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Are there any corners in the silo into which they could paint themselves?
Vertical integration (Score:5, Funny)
Should have left the missile (Score:4, Funny)
They should have left the missile there and built the computers in to it.
1. Harvest the warhead for nuclear material - onsite power.
2. Instant, one button off-site backup. OK, not with great integrity control, but...
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Just leave them in there. Nothing of value will be lost. It's not like they were ever going to reproduce anyway.
Re:Should have left the missile (Score:5, Funny)
RTFA (or even just the summary!) This is Quebec. They don't have nuclear missiles.
And we know this for a fact because if they did, they would have already nuked all English-speaking Canadian cities and declared independence years ago.
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RTFA (or even just the summary!) This is Quebec. They don't have nuclear missiles.
And we know this for a fact because if they did, they would have already nuked all English-speaking Canadian cities and declared independence years ago.
lol So true. I visited there a couple years ago for a coding competition and the people are nice... if you can speak French.
Re:Should have left the missile (Score:5, Funny)
I found that true in Quebec some years ago, but when I went back more recently I ran into a LOT of people who were happy to speak English, even though I speak French (albeit VERY poorly) and tried.
Me: "Bonjour"
Waitress: "Hello. Can we speak English?"
Me: "You got how bad my French was from 'Bonjour'?"
Waitress: (giggles) "Yes"
I don't know who was laughing harder at that, me, the waitress, or my wife. But the point is that Quebec seems to have gone through a sea change in the last decade or so, and the residents seem much more accepting of Americans speaking English.
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I don't see what's different from a decade ago. People that sells something, like the tourism industry and restaurants, always have been used to receive people that speak English only. We in Quebec are like everybody else, we want money from the tourists. The fact that you said "Bonjour" is of course seen as a big plus since it will be seen as a sign of respect.
However, Quebecers themselves expect to be served in French when they enter a restaurant, and they can be insulted if they don't, even if they speak
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lol So true. I visited there a couple years ago for a coding competition and the people are nice... if you can speak French.
Right, just like the southern US TOTALLY embraces spanish speaking citizens. *Spits*
Ok first learn to use the quote tag.
Second, I'm not from southern US or anywhere else in the US.
And third,
*Spits*
Seriously? Wow.
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Visiting != living there.
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The picture of the "Compute room" was interesting. Both the Teletype terminals and the side burns on the operators look like they could withstand nuclear attack.
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Give the slide author a break. He was probably one of those kids who were forbidden **by LAW** to be taught English in school before the 4th Grade.
That's bill 101 and the separatist PQ for you.
They're always trying to dumb down the Quebec sheeple so that they can't work outside of Quebec. It's also illegal for parents to send their kids to English schools unless *Both* parents are English. Then can justify closing English school due to lack of enrollment...
It's not informative, it's BS (Score:1, Informative)
There is no law that prevent a child to learn English prior to 4th grade in Quebec. English as a second language was just not part of the curriculum until 4th grade - but for a few years now kids learn French and English starting in grade 1.
And I'll just ignore the rest of your delusive rant as it doesn't even deserve a response.
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The "4th grade" thing might be gone now but it was on the books at one point.
BTW: The quality of English being taught in Quebec is so bad that my sister, who is fluently bilingual, was asked to stay in English class (instead of getting an exemption) to help the other students. This was in Secondary 3 (Grade 9). They were learning how to ask for the time in English.
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Give the slide author a break. He was probably one of those kids who were forbidden **by LAW** to be taught English in school before the 4th Grade.
That's bill 101 and the separatist PQ for you.
Please mod the above down, the first part is entirely false, the rest is simply xenophobic or whatever you wanna call it.
Yes, there is a law that incites non-english immigrant people to choose a french primary school since Quebec primary language is french.
Nobody prevents anyone to learn english, and there are of course english courses in primary school.
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Dude, seriously. How is this about the article?
Furthermore, the law doesn't do anything that demographics and US cable doesn't do in every other province in favour of English...
Quebec bashing yields +4 informative on an article about technology, pure weakness...
Imagine (Score:1)
The CLUMEQ Colossus eh? (Score:1)
Colossus (Score:2)
Nice to see a reference to Colossus: The Forbin Project in the document. That film is under-appreciated, especially its own copyright owner. Where's our widescreen format, region 1 DVD, jerks!
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Man, those were the days. I remember when it couldn't keep up with the volume of newsfeeds because it had to swap too much to the HD, which of course was a huge bottleneck. So we spent thousands (tens of?) on a 100 MB RAM-based drive to handle the system's swap partition. Took a day's worth of processing down from 28+ hours down to 4-5.
And it was worth it, too. A
An old idea (Score:1)
MacChimney lives!
Familiar Grounds (Score:1, Interesting)
That facility at the Vachon Pavillion, Université Laval in Québec city is were I spent most of my time while doing my degree in Engineering Physics. I'm glad that unused accelerator is now being revamped into something useful.
Now if only they can also find some money to paint the damn thing instead of letting it being barf-green mixed with rust....
Next they'll be claiming Dust Puppy sightings (Score:1)
Could have some fun with this (Score:5, Funny)
Back in college the city was putting in a new, very large water tower. We started a rumor that it was actually a nuclear power plant disguised as a water tower and if you called the city, they would claim it was only a water tower.
They got enough calls it made the local paper. And when they tried to explain it was a water tower, "They said you'd say that!" Classic.
A data center in a silo would be almost as good. Looks like a death ray generator to me. Yeah, Canadian death ray. Pew! Pew! Pew! Eh?
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A data center in a silo would be almost as good. Looks like a death ray generator to me. Yeah, Canadian death ray. Pew! Pew! Pew! Eh?
That's preposterous... Everyone knows that the Canadian doomsday machine is at the top of the CN Tower [imdb.com].
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Considering that the said silo housed a particle accelerator before housing a data center, you aren't that far off with your 'death ray' idea...
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Even worse, it's a French Canadian death ray.
Speaking anything other then English is a little suspicious, if you ask me those guys are up to no good.
I find this idea to be highly... (Score:2)
...SHOCKING!
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There is a “reply” feature; learn to use it.
re. slide 11 (Score:1, Troll)
Circular Redundancy? (Score:1)
And I though this new design was all about being able to compute CRCs faster!
On a more serious note :
- It's cool that they recycle the heat and use outside air for cooling during winter (Our winters are way cool enough for that!)
- When the university (also in Québec) where I did my bachelor build a new HPC datacenter in 2005, some students of the engineering faculty actually drafted a project to recycle the heat produced by the datacenter, but they were turned down with the excuse that their project wa
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But it has the Sun inside.
The original use for the structure... (Score:3, Interesting)
GOOD DAY THIS IS THE VOICE OF COLOSSUS eh? (Score:2, Redundant)
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And my modpoints just expired.
+1 Great White North [wikipedia.org] reference (unofficial, wind-assisted) moderation for you!
What a waste of money (Score:2)
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Put the towers IN THE GROUND. Even here in Colorado that is around 55-60F. The nice thing is that it is easier to protect down there. Heck, the old missile silos around US, Canada, Russia, etc. are IDEAL for this.
Powered by Stirling generator. Stick a cold side heat exchanger at the base and a hot side exchanger at the top, plumbed so you can switch them summer/winter. Pipe the heat via closed loop water pipes so you can keep the working gas loop short enough for decent RPM. Scavenge the heat from the DC as well to keep the overall losses down. Free power.
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I fail to see how this is a waste of money. Instead of building the silo (or digging a hole), they converted a structure already present.
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I'll bite, where are all the old missile silos in Canada?
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> I'll bite, where are all the old missile silos in Canada?
You know all those "grain" silos out in the prairies? Fell for it, didn't you?
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> Put the towers IN THE GROUND. Even here in Colorado that is around 55-60F.
The ground also doesn't conduct heat very well.
I hardly ever react on Slashdot ... (Score:1)
... because there's always a lot of people who are way smarter than me here who come and make very insightful comments but this time I have to say ... ... so farking what ?
Please return to your normal schedules.
Thank you.
Tessa
Prior Art (Score:1)
Star Trek Computer Core? (Score:1)
More links on Colosse (Score:1)
Sun prepared interesting material on the Colosse supercomputer
- Video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1qyCH2G8epo [youtube.com]
- Interactive presentation: http://www.sun.com/ws/vid.jsp?wcwid=10B02221_01&size=880x600 [sun.com]
- Promo sheet: http://www.sun.com/customers/servers/clumeq.xml [sun.com]
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Because Quebec is a very sensible place to build a data center? The cheap hydroelectric power and cold weather 8 months of the year help reduce costs. It is relatively close to the US east coast and the bulk of the Canadian population.
Makes a fuck of a lot more sense than Texas in many ways, which is as hot as hell, and has expensive electricity. Not to mention its proximity to Mexico, which is always a worry.
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That was actually a halfway-interesting comment. Much more interesting than TFS, I’d say.
Still not terribly interesting to someone who doesn’t live in Quebec... but halfway interesting.
I’m willing to be interested. You just have to tell me why I should be.
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I’m willing to be interested. You just have to tell me why I should be.
Punch-and-pie?
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Add pizza and we have a deal.
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Wait, you don't care about a cool data center in a silo?
Sir, please turn in your geek card.
Also, if somehow you don't care solely because it is located in Québec, you may pretend it is located somewhere you like better, if that helps you get past that.
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Uh... no. Should I?
Like I said in my other comment... sell me on it. TFA does a really bad job of making it sound interesting.
Marketing: not my thing, but here goes.. (Score:3, Insightful)
- reuse of existing structure (one with nice, thick walls)
- vertical scale-out (think cup stacking)
- leverages magic of physics (hot ring, cold ring - inherent strength of tubular structure)
- shorter-than-typical cable runs (~10m)
- tubes use less concrete and steel than cubes
- free-air cooling
The only impressive re-use of a concrete silo structure I have seen is a retrofit into a rock-climbing gym (http://stoneworksrockgym.com/photogallery.htm).
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The only impressive re-use of a concrete silo structure I have seen is a retrofit into a rock-climbing gym
I guess it's not exactly a silo, but the old reactor housing from the Cherokee Nuclear Power Plant was used to film the underwater scenes in The Abyss [wikipedia.org]. I'd say that is a pretty impressive re-use of a similar, although much, much bigger structure. The linked picture shows Deep Core high and dry, but they filled that mofo with a gazillion gallons of water, and then to make it look darker and deeper, they poured something like 2 gazillion little styrofoam pellets on the surface to block out the majority of t
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Ah ha! Someone from Ontario!
No, actually. There’s a whole big world outside your borders. :p
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There’s a whole big world outside your borders
Most of it doesn't go out of it's way to point out that it doesn't care what happens in my province. I gave you the benefit of doubt and assumed you must be playing up the Quebec-Ontario feud rather than just being an arbitrary a**. (As a side note, I of course have nothing against Ontario. It's a wonderful province.)
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...and I have nothing against Quebec. I’m just puzzled as to why this fairly boring story was posted. I probably still wouldn’t be terribly interested even if it had been built in my own city.
That said, some of the Anonymous Cowards have responded to my comment (which was not meant to be flamebait in the least) with some fairly interesting takes on the story.
TFS just did a really crappy job of making it sound interesting. All it said was that they did this. It could have been so much better if t