IBM and the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology at Zurich plan to build a water-cooled supercomputer whose surplus heat will be re-used to heat the university's buildings.
The Aquasar supercomputer will be located at the ETH Zurich facility, and it will start operations next year, the partners said in an announcement on Tuesday.
Water flows along copper pipes in a blade server used in the Aquasar supercomputer.
(Credit: IBM)The supercomputer will combine two rack-mounted IBM BladeCenter servers, each containing multiple blades with a mixed population of IBM PowerXCell 8i and Intel Nehalem processors. It is expected to deliver a peak performance of about 10 teraflops.
The installation will re-use heat directly for in-building heating. IBM estimates that the wate-rcooling scheme will reduce the system's carbon footprint by up to 85 percent and save up to 30 tons of carbon dioxide annually, compared with standard cooling approaches. The comparison calculations are based on average yearly operation of the system and on in-building heating energy being produced by fossil fuels, the company said.
The energy-consuming refrigeration units used by almost every data center consume about half of the a data center's energy. Aquasar will need no such equipment. As a result, it should reduce overall energy consumption by 40 percent, according to IBM.
"Energy is arguably the number-one challenge humanity will be facing in the 21st century. We cannot afford anymore to design computer systems based on the criterion of computational speed and performance alone," Professor Poulikakos of ETH Zurich, the leader of the Aquasar project, said in a statement. "The new target must be high-performance and low-net power consumption supercomputers and data centers. This means liquid cooling."
The system is the product of an extended joint research project between ETH and IBM scientists, focused on chip-level water-cooling. It also encompasses a concept for "water-cooled data centers with direct energy re-use" proposed by scientists at IBM's Zurich Lab.
Aquasar's use of warm water rather than cold water for cooling is unique and IBM-patented, a spokesman for the company said. Water, which is about 4,000 times more efficient as a coolant than air, will enter the system at 60 degrees C. This will keep the chips in the system at operating temperatures below their maximum of 85 degrees C, according to IBM.
The high input temperature of the coolant results in an even higher-grade heat as an output, which in this case will be about 65 degrees C, the company said.
The system uses jet impingement cooling, which means that water makes direct contact with the back of the chip via micro-channels in the heat sink, according to research papers by the IBM and ETH scientists involved in the Aquasar project. "This method incurs neither the thermal resistance overhead of a base plate, nor the overhead and reliability problem of thermal interface materials, and thus is promising for removing highest-power densities," according to one paper.
Pipelines from the individual blades link to the server rack's water-pipe network, which in turn is connected to the main water transportation network. Aquasar will need about 10 liters of water for cooling, pumped at some 30 liters per minute, IBM said. The cooling system is a closed circuit: the water is heated by the chips and cooled to the required temperature as it passes through a passive heat exchanger, delivering the removed heat directly to the heating system of the university.
Aquasar will be used by the computer science department at ETH Zurich for multiscale flow simulations related to nanotechnology and fluid dynamics. Researchers plan to show that solving scientific problems efficiently can be performed in an energy-efficient manner.
Manek Dubash of ZDNet UK reported from London.
NEW YORK--"I'm anti-tax, but I'm pro-carbon tax," Tesla Motors founder Elon Musk said onstage at the Wired Business Conference here Monday--a remark that prompted interviewer and Wired editor-in-chief Chris Anderson to quip that he was a "true Silicon Valley libertarian."
Tesla Motors Chairman and CEO Elon Musk
(Credit: Tesla Motors)Gasoline "should probably be $10" per gallon, said onetime PayPal co-founder Musk, who is also attempting to make sending satellites into space cheaper with a start-up called SpaceX. "I'm not paying for the true cost of gasoline at the pump...since nobody's explicitly paying for the CO2 capacity of the oceans and atmospheres, it's getting consumed. We will pay for it down the road, but we are sort of ignoring it for now."
Musk's company has put out the Tesla Roadster, a pricey sports car that runs exclusively on electric power. On the way is the Model S, a more affordable sedan. Separate from the technology, Tesla has gained a reputation for financial difficulties and corporate bickering. Earlier this month, former CEO Martin Eberhard sued Musk and the company for libel and breach of contract.
Musk's rash attitude and devotion to cutting-edge innovation has constructed him as a figure less than willing to compromise. He didn't sound too satisfied, for example, with the level of innovation in the Toyota Prius, the car that is practically synonymous with environmental consciousness in the auto industry.
"A Prius is not a true hybrid, really," he said. (A plug-in Prius is on the way.) "The current Prius is like, 2 percent electric. It's a gasoline car with slightly better mileage."
That said, Tesla shines quite a bit brighter due to the utter disarray of the U.S. auto industry, with major automakers falling into bankruptcy and Detroit in a continuing downward spiral. This, according to Musk, was the inevitable result of a completely broken system.
"Great companies are built on great products," he said, and when those products take a turn for the worse, so does the company. Automakers, Musk theorized, focused too much on the money rather than innovation. "The path to the CEO's office should not be through the CFO's office, and it should not be through the marketing department. It needs to be through engineering and design."
Musk said that unions weren't inherently the problem but the way that they were structured was. "It's not out of the question to have unions. But if they do have a union, they've got to understand that they're on the same side of the company," Musk said. "I really am kind of against having a two-class system where you've got the workers and the management sort of like the nobles and peasants." In other words, Musk thinks Detroit could use a dose of Silicon Valley corporate culture.
Surprisingly, Musk implied that Detroit will survive. "I think it'll probably be a healthier place. This has been somewhat cathartic. Maybe, I think, maybe I'm being overly optimistic, but I think this will be a cathartic experience," Musk said. "I think GM and Ford, maybe not Chrysler, but GM and Ford will come out of this healthier...and more competitive."
He wants Tesla to be part of that, obviously.
"I'd like to take up some of the manufacturing plants," he said. "When the mess gets sorted out I'd like to have a conversation with whoever's in charge."
TVs galore at Ceatec 2008.
(Credit: Erica Ogg/CNET News)TOKYO--The Ceatec 2008 circus is packing up the tent, but it won't be long until we see many of these same gadgets again. As the Japanese consumer tech showcase winds down, let's take a look at the major themes of this year's show and look forward to what will make it to the Consumer Electronics Show in January.
Although the show was a bit smaller this year, it's still the place to see highly imaginative prototypes, as well as get a glimpse of what will actually be on U.S. stores shelves in the coming year.
The most prevalent theme among the electronics giants: thin TVs. Just like at CES in Las Vegas, IFA in Berlin, and CEDIA Expo this year, they're jostling with each other in a race to see who can make the largest screen on the skinniest panel.
Sony continued to push its current 11-inch OLED TV model, the XEL-1, and showed the prototype 27-inch version. But the company also showed an even thinner prototype, whose display is a mere .3 millimeters thin.
But those are small. In larger TVs, Hitachi showed off a 15-millimeter LCD and a 35-millimeter plasma set (see picture), as did Sharp, which announced its new 23-millimeter thin Aquos XS (for "extra slim") model. Toshiba also lined up to show off a concept Regza that looks and leans like an oversize piece of mirrored glass.
Hitachi's super-thin LCD.
(Credit: Erica Ogg/CNET News)
A slim and trim plasma TV from Hitachi.
(Credit: Erica Ogg/CNET News)Many companies also showed new types of interfaces, such as gesture-based technology. Panasonic showed its connected-home concept, which included an impressive video wall. Users could theoretically call up an exercise program onto the wall, and a video of an instructor would appear and respond to users' movements. Hitachi showed digital signage technology that used human gestures to play games and create interactive advertisements.
... Read moreIf there's a place that's more of a sensory overload than Las Vegas, it's Tokyo, which makes it a perfect place to host what many say is the best consumer electronics show in the world: the Combined Exhibition of Advanced Technologies, or Ceatec, for short.
It's that time of year again, after IFA in Berlin and before the madness of the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, when Ceatec gets its turn on the world's technology stage.
It's a huge show: just less than 206,000 people showed up to see the 895 companies show off their wares last year. The 2008 confab, which runs from Tuesday to Friday in Chiba, Japan, just outside Tokyo, promises to be even bigger.
While Ceatec offers a glimpse into the future of gadgetry, it's also a parade of practical products. Some tech exhibits can be merely a glance at what a company's R&D department is toying around with in a basement laboratory, with no practical application in sight. However, it's very likely that Asian and European consumers will see them in stores sooner than those in the United States.
From the standpoint of a manufacturer or marketer, this show can be kind of dramatic. It's often the last tryout before products get cut from a company's portfolio. Although many products shown are made especially for the Asian or European markets, it's also a final test in another way.
"The reception these products get at Ceatec will help decide if they will enter the U.S. market," according to Richard Doherty, a consumer electronics market researcher at The Envisioneering Group. Doherty hunts the halls every year at Ceatec looking for the best upcoming technology.
But just like at CES, not everything is designed to become an actual product. Both big and small names in electronics come to Ceatec to display a large portfolio of products so that investors, journalists, potential partners, and retailers can take a look.
While some of the products will already be in development, others are just strategic deterrents, designed to throw competitors offtrack from where a company's real product road map is going.
But Ceatec is probably a better show for consumers and gadget hounds, since much of what will be in a company's booth isn't so far from sitting on a store shelf. For example, according to Doherty, 60 percent of the products shown by electronics giant Samsung at CES this past January will become actual products by year's end.
"At the Japan show, more like 9 out of 10 products will make it to market within the year," he said.
And for the stuff that does make the cut, it will sometimes take two to five years before it appears on this side of the Pacific.
... Read more- prev
- 1
- next
