[Beowulf] Rack power requirement question

[David Mathog]

Hi,

For the design of a new computer room I need to put together an
estimate ASAP of typical power usage by a mythical
"full computer rack" - 3 years from now. My crystal ball is a bit
fuzzy in that range so I thought it best to collect several
opinions and then present an answer based on those values. If you
have a moment please fill in your best guess for power
consumption values, in 2008, in kilowatts for:

1.  a "high end" rack               (most power)
2.  an "average" rack               (average power)
3.  the "minimum worthwhile" rack   (least power)

The third one is a probably not named well, so here's an example
in today's terms: this rack might be stocked with Pentium III's
from 2001 or so, since anything cooler than that wouldn't
calculate fast enough to be worth the effort of maintaining it.

I'm not going to specify what type of computing equipment goes
in the racks, assume that it's whatever would be appropriate for
your own work.

Thanks,

David Mathog
mathog at caltech.edu
Manager, Sequence Analysis Facility, Biology Division, Caltech