[Beowulf] bring back 2012?

Stu Midgley sdm900 at gmail.com
Fri Aug 19 07:59:57 PDT 2016


Prentice, have you actually run any of these solutions?  Or are you just a
back seat pundit?

Immersion cooling is practical, efficient, easy and has a ton of side
benefits.

 * cheap cooling (can run evaporative rather than compressors)
 * nodes use 20% less energy due to removing fans
 * node have less failures
 * system is more robust against cooling failures (ie. if you lose cooling,
tanks can take a long time to heat up to a point where you would turn nodes
off - we have ridden out 20mins cooling outages)
 * more reliable run times - cause cpu's never heat up and change their
performance
 * fluid has a high fire and flash point - so you can get permits to hold it
 * fluid is readily available and cheap
 * fluid is safe (I've ingested and swam in it with no adverse effects -
yet)
 * quiet - no 1" screaming fans

I looked at all the other solutions and they scare the hell out of me.  Try
putting all those pipes into a 2RU node with 8 phi's...  it just won't
happen.


On Fri, Aug 19, 2016 at 10:25 PM, Prentice Bisbal <pbisbal at pppl.gov> wrote:

> On 08/19/2016 10:02 AM, Michael Di Domenico wrote:
>
> On Fri, Aug 19, 2016 at 9:32 AM, Stu Midgley <sdm900 at gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>>> http://www.intel.com.au/content/www/au/en/processors/xeon/
>>> xeon-e5-2600-v3-dugeo-insight-demo.html
>>> http://insidehpc.com/2014/11/intel-xeon-phi-takes-downunder-
>>> geosolutions-new-depths/
>>> http://www.grcooling.com/team-member/downunder-geosolutions/
>>>
>> thanks for the links....
>>
>> are you guys using oil immersed cooling?  i've been tracking it for
>> years, but it still seems like it would make a big mess
>>
> I've ranted on the impracticalities of immersion cooling in mineral oil on
> here many times in the past, so I won't rehash those arguments again today.
> Suffice it to say I'm pretty sure the guys at Green Revolution Cooling hate
> seeing me at SC.
>
> I think direct contact liquid cooling (DCLC)solutions from Asetek and
> CoolIT are much more practical, as are immersion cooling systems using 3M
> Novec engineered fluid. Novec is really appealing because of the heat
> transfer efficiency of the change of state. I believe it was originally
> designed as an electronic parts cleaner, too. It evaporates at room temp
> like other electronic cleaners, so when you pull hardware out the liquid,
> it's dry in a matter of seconds, and very clean, too! Much more practical
> than mineral oil in that regard. 3M claims it has a very low global warming
> factor, too.
>
> Personally, I think DCLC since any leaks in the data center should be
> smaller than if a tank-like chassis springs a leak, and there one is scared
> of the environmental impact of water, even when antifreeze and other water
> treatment chemicals are added to it, as would be needed in this use case.
>
> --
> Prentice
>
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-- 
Dr Stuart Midgley
sdm900 at sdm900.com
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