[Beowulf] single power supply for multiple nodes

[Frank Joerdens]

On Mon, Jun 28, 2004 at 04:04:47PM -0700, Joel Jaeggli wrote:
[]
> at the point where you get a whole rack of nodes off a single 
> powersupply the size of the conductors for some of the voltages get quite 
> large (the 3.3volt and 5volt especially if you need a couple hundred 
> amps)...

Having large conducters needn't necessarily be a problem. You might get
creative and use aluminium tubes that could even double as part of the
vertical support structure of the rack itself.

If you can power 4 dual opterons off a KW, and you're thinking of
stacking 20, that'd be 5 KW, a.k.a. a 1,000 amps at 5 Volts and a little
over 1,500 at 3.3. Sounds a lot, I admit. The power supply itself might
get just too expensive that way ...

> 1kw wouldn't 
> be that huge anyway that's enough for 4-6 dual opteron nodes.

Sorry, I meant multiple-kilowatt; wasn't expressing myself very well.

I'm not trying to argue at this point that this would make sense,
economically or otherwise, just sorta thinking about it.

Regards,

Frank