Direct-to-chip liquid cooling for reducing power consumption in a subarctic supercomputer centre

• Published in: International Journal of High Performance Computing and Networking
• Main Authors: Ovaska, Seppo J., Dragseth, Roy E., Hanssen, Svenn A.
• Other Authors: Department of Electrical Engineering and Automation, UiT The Arctic University of Norway, Aalto-yliopisto, Aalto University
• Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
• Language: English
• Published: 2017
• Subjects: Data centre; Direct-to-chip liquid cooling; Power consumption; Subarctic climate; Supercomputer; Waste heat reuse; Subarctic
• Online Access: https://aaltodoc.aalto.fi/handle/123456789/24355; https://doi.org/10.1504/IJHPCN.2016.076269

Reduction of data centre power consumption is a timely challenge. Waste heat reuse is another focus area when developing energy efficient and sustainable data centres. And these two issues are interconnected through liquid cooling of server racks and/or direct-to-chip liquid cooling. Both of these solutions make it possible to transfer a significant proportion of the waste heat energy back to profitable use. Nevertheless, the heat reusing opportunity is not the only benefit direct-to-chip liquid cooling may offer. Another benefit is the notable reduction of power consumption related to cooling fans associated with server blades and rack-level cooling systems. To evaluate this benefit, we performed power consumption and performance measurements in a subarctic supercomputer centre hosting a cluster of 632 blade nodes. Our study concentrated on a 47-node subset that we analysed when the servers were executing the LINPACK benchmark. Our conclusion is that direct-to-chip liquid cooling can reduce the total power consumption, in this case, up to 14.4% depending on the inlet air temperature. Peer reviewed