IBM unveils water-cooled Power6 server
By Lawrence Casiraya
INQUIRER.net
First Posted 18:52:00 05/17/2008
Filed Under: Technology (general), Hardware, Computing & Information Technology
MANILA, Philippines -- IBM's new Power575 server uses "chilled" water to dissipate heat, a cooling method that could become the standard in today's power-hungry data centers.
The Power575 (or P575) runs on IBM's latest Power6 microprocessor. Instead of a fan, it uses copper-plates to run chilled water just above the microprocessor's casing.
The Power 575 features 448 processor cores, 3.5 terabytes of memory and 14 nodes in a single rack, thus suited for high-performance computing.
According to IBM, the Power6 chip can clock up to 4.7Ghz, faster than today's standard enterprise servers.
"Air is a better conductor of heat than water," noted Eugene Bay, IBM general manager for Power Systems in Asia Pacific. According to IBM, water can be up to 4,000 times more effective in cooling computer systems than air.
This, however, isn't the first water-cooled IBM server. In 1995, IBM came out with the EOS9000.
But with today's heightened consciousness about power consumption and due to increasing density of heat per server rack in today's data centers, water-based cooling systems could become the standard and deployed on a larger scale.
"Based on studies, every dollar in power and cooling costs is equal to the cost of the hardware itself," said Bay. "In the near-future, costs will continue to accelerate."
Citing industry data, he added that data centers today account for two percent of carbon emissions in the atmosphere.
In the region, IBM said a weather mapping organization is already running a cluster of 22 P575 servers. Bay expects high-computing segments such as life sciences or biotechnology firms to be ideal P575 users.
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