[Beowulf] A Cooler Cloud: A Clever Conduit Cuts Data Centers? Cooling Needs by 90 Percent
Prentice Bisbal
pbisbal at pppl.gov
Mon Jan 28 11:11:45 PST 2019
> I suspect though that you need servers engineered to fit onto their
> heatsinks.
This is the main crux of my previous criticism for direct-contact
liquid-cooling solutions, the cooling piping and heat exchanger(s) can
be retrofit to existing server designs with minimal re-engineering. And
even for immersive cooling, you just remove the case altogether, or make
it completely sealed to contain the coolant, both of which require
minimal re-engineering. This solution looks like it would require major
rethinking of how components are organized.
Prentice
On 1/28/19 12:24 PM, John Hearns wrote:
> Prentice, the website refers to Open Compute racks. "... technology
> has been designed to fit into standard Open Compute racks".
> So yep, 19 inch racks are not being targeted here. But OCP is pretty
> widespread.
> I would really like to find out if they can retrofit these to existing
> kit. I suspect though that you need servers engineered to fit onto
> their heatsinks.
> orced Physics cooling technology has been designed to fit into
> Standard Open Compute Racks. orced Physics cooling technology has been
> designed to fit into Standard Open Compute Racks.
>
>
> On Mon, 28 Jan 2019 at 16:48, Prentice Bisbal via Beowulf
> <beowulf at beowulf.org <mailto:beowulf at beowulf.org>> wrote:
>
> So I was thinking about this over the weekend (because I
> apparently have nothing better to do with my time), and I
> definitely think this is a non-starter due to the massive change
> in server hardware layout to accommodate this thing. Yes, blades,
> and twin form factor servers already required that, and they're
> common form factors, but those form factors were just a matter of
> shrinking or changing the layout of the motherboard but still look
> like "traditional" layouts to the untrained eye, and they were
> still designed with typical front-to-back air cooling in mind. I
> feel like re-arranging the layout of components to accomodate this
> thing is a just more of a change than the market will accept.
>
> Just my 2 cents.
>
> Prentice
>
> On 1/25/19 3:56 PM, Prentice Bisbal wrote:
>>
>> Eric,
>>
>> I was suspecting that might be the case, but the explanations in
>> the other articles were way too vague to be sure of that. The
>> NextPlatform provided much better pictures. If that's the case,
>> this thing operates like a direct-expansion (DX) refrigeration
>> system, where the refrigerant is air and does not change state
>> from liquid to gas, like a typical DX refrigeration system, and
>> the induced-draft fan provides the shaft work, and those tiny
>> channels that allegedly line up the molecules act as many tiny
>> offices for the throttling process. Based on the pictures in the
>> Next Platform article, here is a crude drawing of cross-section
>> of one of these devices that I drew in Google Draw. It should
>> help you understand what's going inside this thing:
>>
>> https://docs.google.com/document/d/1UK94PxVlQtVSb2ns5TbCqHjPJ1vYSOmkGSeSorvHyaM/edit?usp=sharing
>>
>> Given this design, you can only have an induced-draft fan on the
>> outlet. A forced-draft fan on the inlet would compress the air,
>> heating it up and negating the throttling (or Joule-Thompson)
>> effect on the low-pressure side.
>>
>> At the end of the day, thermodynamics still says X amount of
>> shaft work has to be done to provide Y amount of cooling through
>> this process, so I'm still skeptical of it, especially at scale.
>>
>> And for those of you looking for something really boring to read
>> rather than work, here are the related patents. I haven't read
>> them myself.
>>
>> https://patents.google.com/patent/US8414847
>>
>> https://patents.google.com/patent/US8986627B2
>>
>> https://patents.google.com/patent/US10113774B2
>>
>> Prentice
>> On 1/25/19 2:26 PM, Eric Moore wrote:
>>> Actually, it looks like Joule-Thompson cooling to me (Especially
>>> given the "Joule Force" name). You've got the air intake
>>> (ambient), then an expansion nozzle, into a low-pressure region,
>>> which is created by the fan at the end. So the outlet velocity
>>> of the air (and thus it's kinetic energy) is higher than the
>>> inlet velocity, which would lower the internal energy, and thus
>>> the temperature. Instead the fins/nozzle/heatsink transfer heat
>>> to the expanding gas, which exits a little above
>>> ambient temperature. I imagine the drawback is you really need
>>> to get rid of that high velocity hot air, and can't recirculate
>>> it, or the kinetic energy would be converted back to thermal
>>> energy, and mess it all up. The descriptions do all involve the
>>> exhaust air being ducted to the outside. This article has the
>>> most technical detail:
>>> https://www.nextplatform.com/2018/12/04/the-leading-edge-of-air-cooled-servers-leads-to-the-edge/
>>>
>>> On Fri, Jan 25, 2019 at 11:33 AM Prentice Bisbal via Beowulf
>>> <beowulf at beowulf.org <mailto:beowulf at beowulf.org>> wrote:
>>>
>>> You all know how much I like talking about heat transfer and
>>> server cooling, so I decided to do some research on this
>>> product:
>>>
>>> Here's their website:
>>>
>>> https://forcedphysics.com
>>>
>>> and here's their YouTube channel with 5 videos:
>>>
>>> https://www.youtube.com/channel/UClwWeahYGuNl0THWVz1Hyow/videos
>>>
>>> This is really nothing more than an air-cooled heatsink. I'm
>>> afraid I'm going to have to call BS on this technology for
>>> the following reasons:
>>>
>>> 1. It still uses air as the primary cooling medium. I just
>>> don't think air has adequate thermal conductivity or thermal
>>> capacity to serve modern processor, no matter what you do to
>>> it.
>>>
>>> 2. In the videos, they present highly idealized tests with
>>> no control to use for comparison. How do I know I wouldn't
>>> get the same results doing the same experiment but using a
>>> similar duct fashioned out of sheet metal.
>>>
>>> 3. Using this technology means a complete redesign of your
>>> server hardware and possibly your racks.
>>>
>>> 4. None of the information in the videos or on their website
>>> really explains how this technology works, and what really
>>> differentiates it from any other air-cooled heat sink. Most
>>> people with a good invention are usually excited to tell you
>>> how it works. Since they brag about 30 international patents
>>> for this, there's no need to try to protect a trade secret.
>>>
>>> 5. This statement:
>>>
>>>> The fins work like teeth in a comb, neatly orienting air
>>>> molecules to point in the same direction and arranging them
>>>> into columns.
>>>
>>> Based on my education, this statement seems to be completely
>>> devoid of science.
>>>
>>> This statement seems to defy the laws of physics. Last time
>>> I checked, unless an atom or molecule is at absolute zero,
>>> it has movement, whether it's spinning or vibrating, or
>>> both, so how can they get air molecules to line up all in
>>> neat little rows, where the molecules are all pointing the
>>> same way?
>>>
>>> This also implies very laminar flow. As fluid velocity
>>> increases that the diameter of the channel decreases, the
>>> Reynolds Number increases. As the Reynold's number goes up,
>>> turbulence increases, so mathematically, I would expect this
>>> flow to be tubulent, and not laminar. From my classes on
>>> heat transfer, turbulent flow around the heat transfer
>>> surface increases heat transfer, so laminar flow in this
>>> case wouldn't be a good thing.
>>>
>>> Until they can provide better comparisons with real servers
>>> in real data center environments, I'm going to classify this
>>> as "snake oil"
>>>
>>> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Snake_oil
>>>
>>> Prentice
>>>
>>> On 1/24/19 3:54 PM, Chuck_Petras at selinc.com
>>> <mailto:Chuck_Petras at selinc.com> wrote:
>>>> Well, this is interesting.
>>>>
>>>> "According to Forced Physics’ <https://forcedphysics.com/
>>>> [forcedphysics.com]
>>>> <https://urldefense.proofpoint.com/v2/url?u=https-3A__forcedphysics.com_&d=DwMFAw&c=-_uRSsrpJskZgEkGwdW-sXvhn_FXVaEGsm0EI46qilk&r=fawF3TRTwCqlaBkoLcxYCr4F4NRwCc64hmEgi9rHPpE&m=zr6lAlVphGxOQTXSElww9hGpqb9IZPik0_MN2v8Fqjs&s=lb4Hi9X8NKIYWe_e1RU3Cw4gr9Uz_B7n5pnCNY0ss3U&e=>>
>>>> chief technology officer, David Binger, the company’s
>>>> conductor can help a typical data center eliminate its need
>>>> for water or refrigerants and shrink its 22-MW load by 7.72
>>>> MW, which translates to an annual reduction of 67.6 million
>>>> kWh. That data center could also save a total of US $45
>>>> million a year on infrastructure, operating, and energy
>>>> costs with the new system, according to Binger. “We are
>>>> solving the problem that electrons create,” he said."
>>>>
>>>> A Cooler Cloud: A Clever Conduit Cuts Data Centers’ Cooling
>>>> Needs by 90 Percent
>>>> https://spectrum.ieee.org/energy/environment/a-cooler-cloud-a-clever-conduit-cuts-data-centers-cooling-needs-by-90-percent
>>>> [spectrum.ieee.org]
>>>> <https://urldefense.proofpoint.com/v2/url?u=https-3A__spectrum.ieee.org_energy_environment_a-2Dcooler-2Dcloud-2Da-2Dclever-2Dconduit-2Dcuts-2Ddata-2Dcenters-2Dcooling-2Dneeds-2Dby-2D90-2Dpercent&d=DwMFAw&c=-_uRSsrpJskZgEkGwdW-sXvhn_FXVaEGsm0EI46qilk&r=fawF3TRTwCqlaBkoLcxYCr4F4NRwCc64hmEgi9rHPpE&m=zr6lAlVphGxOQTXSElww9hGpqb9IZPik0_MN2v8Fqjs&s=VuDTSuinKPMpF6NCztFZkSGOVo3LD7MLjroIj_sn0ao&e=>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> Chuck Petras, PE**
>>>> Schweitzer Engineering Laboratories, Inc
>>>> Pullman, WA 99163 USA
>>>> http://www.selinc.com <http://www.selinc.com/>
>>>>
>>>> SEL Synchrophasors - A New View of the Power System
>>>> <http://synchrophasor.selinc.com
>>>> <http://synchrophasor.selinc.com/>>
>>>>
>>>> Making Electric Power Safer, More Reliable, and More
>>>> Economical (R)
>>>>
>>>> ** Registered in Oregon.
>>>>
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