Water-cooled IBM supercomputer to heat buildings

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.

[NocturnalCT]

This is such an obvious piece of technology you'd have to wonder why it took so long. Blowing heat into the atmosphere while consuming power to heat the rest of the building makes no sense.

[mbenedict]

NOTHING NEW.

20+ years ago, University of Michigan cycled heat generated by its Cray supercomputers to heat one of the university's parking garages in the winter.

[The Wiethoff]

Great, so when the computer crashes you also freeze to death

[monkeyfun14]

What happens when its hot as hell outside?

[stevicus]

Dude, It's Zurich, ever been there? Doesn't quite have the weather of say El Paso...

[Sac Tinko]

During the summers, which are mild in Zurich, the repurposed heat will be used to heat water.

[stevicus]

Great idea, especially the part of starting with relatively warm water. Having had several PPC-equipped comps, can't help but chuckle, though there are some intel processors in the mix. Reminds me of how I used my G5 tower on cold nights in Northern Japan.

[solitare_pax]

It really does work! I used to use an old Intel 8088 machine and its CRT monitor to warm up my tiny room on cold winter days. :)

Can't do that with my current Mac Mini and LCD monitor though. That's progress...

[SlimGem]

"Aquasar will need about 10 liters of water for cooling, pumped at some 30 liters per minute ..."

Yup, sounds like a G5 Power Mac.

[vasobre]

Great news, and hopefully they wont lock themselves in to a 'proprietary cooling connector' piece of technology so they will be able to buy any brand of servers and fit it in. But hats down to IBM for trying and being there (would not expect less from them anyway :) ).

[Altotus]

This is the way for the large server installations reduce the AC load and recycle the rejected heat now the rejected heat can be brought out of the installation at a level that is useful and a possible economic byproduct rather than a costly problem to remove. Thus it is possible to rotate load to points that require thermal energy and idle points that that don't have a current demand. But that is beyond the scope of such a small project here however it demonstrates the principle by hardware. I do anticipate the connector will in fact be very simple however it will be the point that proprietary development will center upon as the tech is super simple. This will allow waste heat to be resold (like from a server farm) whether big blue realizes it yet or not and the density can be increased. I have been trying to communicate to others how to save the big bucks but I do not think I have spoken to anyone who understands the utility of this simple tech or the cost savings. Looks like IBM is on the job and on the money. Oh by the way it works where it hot or cold everoyone needs hot water from the tropics to the poles. This is just one example servers could be cooled by a very simple setup much simpler and less energy intensive.