How does one go about creating a new breed of supercomputer capable of performing trillions of operations per second without running up some beastly air conditioning bills? With water, of course.
IBM says it's devised a new system that uses water-chilled copper plates located directly above each of the 448 microprocessors in its Power 575 supercomputer to remove all that hot, hot heat and transport it somewhere more useful -- like your shower for instance.
The so-called Hydro-Cluster at the Max Planck Institute for Plasma Physics in Garching, Germany uses a new 5-GHz microprocessor, so IBM scientists rightly recognized they'd need a new chip-level water cooling system, one that could bring water as close as possible to the hottest parts of these heat-generating speed demons.
"Instead of treating heat like the enemy, they're treating it like a precious commodity," says IBM's Jeff Gluck of the company's method. Water, as Gluck notes, is close to 4,000 times more effective than traditional air cooling, and the Hydro-Cluster carries the piping hot water off of the chip and out of the system where it can then be reused "to heat your home, the town swimming pool, a hot shower, or to cook a family dinner."
The next step, IBM researchers say, is to get the water even closer to the chip -- like, inside of it. Once captured there, the water can be easily routed out of the computer and pumped directly into the heating system for re-use.
Photo courtesy IBM
IBM Turns on the Water for Energy-Efficient Supercomputer [Press Release]
