[Beowulf] Servers Too Hot? Intel Recommends a Luxurious Oil Bath

[Jeff Johnson]

On 9/5/12 9:15 AM, Robert G. Brown wrote:
> On Wed, 5 Sep 2012, Lux, Jim (337C) wrote:
>
>> But as long as we're talking quarrys and such, what about the scheme of
>> building a big pit to fill full of ice during the winter, and melting it
>> during the summer. (assuming you are in a
>> less-than-wonderful-un-California-like climate where this would work.)
> Or, just place all of your cluster in Antarctica.  Or somewhere on the
> Greenland ice pack.  Or in Tibet.  There in any mountainous region where
> the cluster is up there 4 or 5 km at a mean air temperature that is
> "cold" so you don't need refrigeration, only circulation of outside
> ambient air.  If you want to get all fancy, build your nodes so that
> they are weatherproof and sit underneath several square meters of solar
> panel and battery backing so that they run "for free" if you build them
> in a cold, high, desert like the Andes.
>
I'm surprised more isn't done with seaside DCs in California. The 
Pacific along the CA coast is 30-40F at depths shallow as 60 feet. A 
near limitless supply of cooling, at least until the poles melt. Why 
there aren't DC's looping sea water for cheap cooling (its good enough 
for nuke reactors) escapes me. If you combined the GreenRevolution 
approach with looping sea water to exchange the heat you would get 
pretty close to a PUE of 1. Especially if servers and their components 
were redesigned for submerged operation as the original article mentioned.


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Jeff Johnson
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