You know how hot your laptop can get when you use it for hours? Imagine how hot servers —the high-powered computers that run websites and apps— must get... Now imagine a whole building full of servers running at full tilt—and grab some ice water.

Keeping data centers cool is a major engineering problem, not to mention an ecological one. Intel is working on a new approach: submerging them in oil.

Intel just concluded a year-long test of the tech with immersion-equipment company Green Revolution Cooling. It has declared that its chips are ready for the dunked-in-oil technique, reports Rich Miller at Data Center Knowledge.

Today, data centers use air cooling. This means things like building bigger buildings, so servers can be spread out, plus limiting the number of servers in each building, If liquid cooling works—as Intel's tests show it does—this means that existing buildings can house more computers and each one can run more workloads.

Plus, submerged computers may be more powerful because faster CPUs usually require more power which produces more heat.

The liquid involved is mineral oil which reduces heat like water, but doesn't conduct electricity.

Submerged desktop PCs have actually been around for years. Below I've posted a video that shows one being built in 2007. And some old-school supercomputers used liquid refrigerants. But submerged high-performance computers running in a data center are new and could be a fantastic alternative as the world moves to cloud computing.

Cloud computing is where applications are run in a data center and accessed from a PC, mobile phone or tablet. The cloud requires lots of servers in lots of data centers. This could be a great new way to cool them.

The major advantage of mineral oil cooling is that it is relatively cheap and can be adapted to work with a variety of systems ranging from small computers to massive servers. Since it is non-conductive, the oil doesn't short out circuits and is harmless to computer hardware. On the other hand, it can be very difficult or almost impossible to clean and remove mineral oil from the hardware once it has been submerged.

The cooling alternative is definitely appealing to massive server arrays, saving precious energy and cooling costs. The only downside is that the oil needs to be flushed and changed every ten years or so.

Are You Ready To Drown Your PC in Oil?

Uploaded by: Unknown

Views:

Category: Intel, Technology

Share

Tweet