Physical questions

[Robert G. Brown]

On Tue, 14 Jan 2003, Michael Stein wrote:

> > High density clusters also carry a fire risk of their very own.  One can
> > easily achieve node densities that consume 2 or 3 thousand watts in a
> > rack (and with effort, can maybe double that).
> 
> I've seen a dual 2.4 GHz Xeon Intel 1U machine measured at 250 W (multiple
> "burn*" running).  A rack full of these (42 U) really is 10KW.

Has anyone actually filled a rack with nodes this hot and burned this
much power, per node, sustained?  Kind of scary, if you have;-)

A joule is dropping a one kilogram hammer on your finger from 10 cm.

So 10KW is a one-metric-ton jackhammer, pounding up and down one meter
once a second, sustained.  With all the cooling fans running, it
probably sounds like one as well...:-)

Ouch!

   rgb

-- 
Robert G. Brown	                       http://www.phy.duke.edu/~rgb/
Duke University Dept. of Physics, Box 90305
Durham, N.C. 27708-0305
Phone: 1-919-660-2567  Fax: 919-660-2525     email:rgb at phy.duke.edu