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IBM Hydro Cluster Water Cooling  (Source: IBM)
IBM Power 575 performs at 600 GFlops per node

Computer enthusiasts that overclock their CPUs have known for a long time that liquid cooling has the potential to cool the processor better than air cooling. Liquid cooling in the enthusiast space is common and has even given way in the extreme performance categories to much more exotic means of cooling processors.

In the supercomputer realm companies like IBM have traditionally relied on air cooling for the CPUs via air conditioning for the room the supercomputer is in. IBM introduced its latest supercomputer called the Power 575, which is equipped with IBM’s latest Power6 microprocessor. The Power 575 has moved from air cooling to liquid cooling and thanks to the liquid cooling useing water-chilled copper plates located above each processor, the new supercomputer requires 80% fewer air conditioning units.

The significantly reduced need for air conditioning means that the energy needed to cool the data center can be reduced by 40%. IBM researchers say water can be up to 4,000 times more efficient than air cooling for computer systems.

The Power 575 supercomputer has 448 cores per rack and provides over five times the performance of its predecessor and is three times more energy efficient per rack. Each rack features 14 2U nodes each consisting of 32 4.7GHz cores of Power6 and 3.5TB of memory. Each node is capable of 600 GFlops and is three times more efficient in GFlops per kilowatt than the Power5 air-cooled processors.

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Water Cooling
By mattclary on 4/9/2008 7:14:50 PM , Rating: 3
1. Watercooling is really only needed if you want to OC
2. If you skip watercooling and invest the money you would have spent on that, you could afford a faster CPU.

Water is the devil, can totally f... up a house, let alone electronics.

Be all cool and edgy if you want, I can't hear my air cooled machine running, and I can sleep at night knowing I won't have a high-tech fish tank in the morning.




RE: Water Cooling
By Carter642 on 4/9/2008 8:14:00 PM , Rating: 1
Actually there are affordable non-conductive coolants available, if you wanted you could fill your case with the stuff and it'd run just fine. I don't make any gaurentees as to what it'd do to your carpet but carpet stains are better than a toasted rig.


RE: Water Cooling
By ninus3d on 4/10/2008 3:07:41 AM , Rating: 2
You obviously don't have a girlfriend/wife living with you!


RE: Water Cooling
By SectionEight on 4/10/2008 8:26:04 AM , Rating: 4
I've seen a demo in which they submerged the entire mobo in non-conductive coolant and it ran fine. Pretty cool, if impractical.


RE: Water Cooling
By tastyratz on 4/10/2008 11:55:28 AM , Rating: 3
Water cooling has a very practical application as well
Its starting to become more attractive to OEM's too.
Water allows you to cool more efficiently, in a smaller space, and in a quieter fashion.
Water cooling for people such as me allows me to scale my computer beyond speeds available to me in retail for bottom dollar.
My computer runs more silent with water than you could ever achieve practically with air cooling. I have built my computer specifically around silent computing.

Some people do not need want or have time to overclock so perhaps its not for you. See beyond the obvious market and you can see a great potential for many other applications if this were to be adopted.


RE: Water Cooling
By snownpaint on 4/11/2008 10:56:04 AM , Rating: 2
I saw that stuff on the old TV show "Beyond 2000". They took an old Mac, and submerged it while it was running.. (happy mac startup face an all).. Also the liquid would bubble indicating where a short was on a board.. Finally, I have heard of extreme overclockers, that take a tank full of this liquid and run AC coils into it, to get extremely low temperatures to run their machine in.


RE: Water Cooling
By mattclary on 4/10/2008 1:21:21 PM , Rating: 3
Yeah, you are right. I used to work on the B-1 bomber and some of it's electronics were cooled with a thin, clear oil that circulated in the boxes. A bit messy for my needs. The stuff smelled like ass and was hard to get out of your clothes. It was not unusual to take a shower in the crap when changing a box out.


RE: Water Cooling
By afkrotch on 4/10/2008 2:26:28 PM , Rating: 2
quote:
1. Watercooling is really only needed if you want to OC
2. If you skip watercooling and invest the money you would have spent on that, you could afford a faster CPU.

Water is the devil, can totally f... up a house, let alone electronics.

Be all cool and edgy if you want, I can't hear my air cooled machine running, and I can sleep at night knowing I won't have a high-tech fish tank in the morning.


1. No. Silence is golden and air can't compete with water in that realm. Watercooling can be built with specific purposes. For OCing, for quiet, for anything someone can come up with. Shoot, you can built a single watercooling loop to cool all your computers if you wanted to.

2. Or you can keep the watercooling and reuse it over the many years of your computer build. My watercooling setup has been mounted on Athlon XPs, Pentium 4s, and now Core 2 Duo. It can also be mounted on Athlon 64s, X2s, AM2s, Xeons, etc. It's been mounted on Geforce FX5600, 5950 Ultra, 9700 Pro, 9600 XT, 6800, 6800 GT, 7800GTX, and 8800GT. The chipset block has also been mounted on various motherboards throughout it's life. New brackets can be bought for $10 or simply make new ones with a dremel.

Me, I replace the blocks completely, as the newer ones have better cooling properties. But my old ones could be used too, if I felt like it.

http://www.afkrotch.com/My_Comp/Wirbelwind/IMG_059...


So you don't ever need to change the water?
By AnnihilatorX on 4/9/2008 8:22:34 PM , Rating: 2
There would literally be tonnes and gallons of water there. The water definitely need to keep its quality, even if it's a closed system I assume impurities leak in.

My water cooling set comes with anti-corrosion collant, and that has a life apparently. So in 3 or 4 years I am suppose to change the water.

I wonder if you need to do the same to the super computers that uses water cooling.




RE: So you don't ever need to change the water?
By xsilver on 4/9/2008 9:37:10 PM , Rating: 2
I think a great idea would be to pipe the huge tank on this to the toilets. hmmm... warm water to flush toilets

That way I dont think they would even need radiator fans as the water is getting changed with cold tap water all the time.


By jtemplin on 4/10/2008 12:38:59 AM , Rating: 2
Thats a good idea, but the water coming from the main would be too hard I think. Plus you don't need fluoride in your computer and all that other junk. You would probably want to have a filter between the computer and the main as well as a machine which automatically titrates the desired amount of anti-corrosive and biocidal concentration in the water


By IvanAndreevich on 4/10/2008 3:20:45 AM , Rating: 2
That would be a giant waste of water, and the bill for it would be enormous.


By xsilver on 4/10/2008 8:09:29 AM , Rating: 2
say what?
the bill for flushing toilets is enormous?
do you not flush the toilet at your workplace? :P

Also to the poster above, I think there is no need for that anti-bacterial stuff as its only needed when you have a closed system.
This would be an open system so there is not enough time for bacteria to grow, they would be flushed!
The only problem I can think of is that there needs to be some sort of failsafe if some new kid wants to play a prank and flush all the toilets at once = empty tank = dead server!


its getting hot in.... where?
By tastyratz on 4/10/2008 12:02:05 PM , Rating: 3
Wheres the heat go?

The article talks about having to use less air conditioning for the room and the many cooling benefits but the computer is still producing the same quantity of heat.
Am I missing something? Where is the heat going here?
I use water cooling and It doesn't magically consume heat, it redirects it to radiators which require lower temperature air passing through them. The heat is still going to go into the room and your still going to combat the same btu.




RE: its getting hot in.... where?
By jRaskell on 4/10/2008 12:29:34 PM , Rating: 3
I think it's safe to assume that, unlike most personal computer liquid cooling systems, for a computer of this size, the coolant is being pumped to external radiators that just use fans to cool with ambient outside air. the computer room is surely still air conditioned for the rest of the super computers components, but because the liquid coolant can more readily transport the majority of the generated heat to an external heat transfer device, the requirements on the AC system are significantly lower.


RE: its getting hot in.... where?
By afkrotch on 4/10/2008 3:26:22 PM , Rating: 2
I'm going to have to say, spot on. I imagine the external radiators standing outside the building being cooled by fans. Other ways could be placing external radiators over ventilation shafts inside the room and have a fan eject the hot air out of the building via the shafts.

I can come up with a bunch of different ways to reduce AC system requirements with such a system. Geothermal cooling comes to mind. Enough to cool a house, so why not a supercomputer.


...but what does it score in PCmark?
By DarkElfa on 4/9/2008 2:57:51 PM , Rating: 1
I mean really, what kind of question do you expect from a PC enthusiast, I just want 3Dmark and PCmark scores. Speaking of, I wonder why they don't run those simple apps for us normals to see, it wouldn't be hard to do I imagine and would at least allow John Q Public to grasp the sheer power of one of these monstrosities.




RE: ...but what does it score in PCmark?
By Polynikes on 4/9/2008 3:02:07 PM , Rating: 3
I'd hazard a guess that those supercomputers don't run Windows, and Futuremark has little desire to port 3DMark over to whatever OS they use.

And I'm sure IBM has better things to do with their supercomputer.

That said, if they DID do something like that, I'd love to find out how high the score was. :)


By DarkElfa on 4/9/2008 3:06:29 PM , Rating: 2
See, an answer that makes since, thank you.


But the real question is...
By TreeDude62 on 4/9/2008 4:17:04 PM , Rating: 1
Can it max out Crysis?




By Captain828 on 4/9/2008 4:29:35 PM , Rating: 2
neah... still stuck @ 40FPS, 1920x1200 (DX10, Very High of course)


By murphyslabrat on 4/10/2008 12:19:11 PM , Rating: 3
Nah, they capped the frame-rate at 40 per second.