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45°C cooling design cuts data center water use to near zero

blogs.nvidia.com

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Re: 45°C cooling design cuts data center water use to near zero

#81

Post by ChoGGi »

drnick1 wrote: post #68
joe_mamba wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Do you live near a datacenter? Property value goes down, constant humming I don't live next to one but I'd take constant humming over the constant stop/go traffic noise, honking, squeaky brakes, slamming doors and revving engines I now have on my western side of the apartment, thanks to the unemployment office the city opened on my street not too long ago. So how come constant humming is somehow an illegal nuisance,…

> we've been expected to put up with the much more annoying urban traffic noise for decades just fine? For one, there tends to be little traffic at night when most people want quiet in order to sleep. Driving is also something (nearly) everyone does and benefits directly from, so negative externalities are easier to accept. It is much harder to accept a new source of noise near your home you haven't asked for and don…

I live nearby a road going down a coulee that dickheads love to speed down in warmer weather at night. I'd trade that for a hum any day.

Re: 45°C cooling design cuts data center water use to near zero

#82

Post by wolvoleo »

asdff wrote: post #44
wolvoleo wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you look at how small a Starlink sat is, and how much of that space is taken up by power generation and storage, antennas, signal conditioning, RF electronics and more, I'm sure that whatever resources are running the computing in the entire starlink fleet orbiting the world can fit all together in one single row of servers in an existing datacenter. And yes, a space-based computing node would not need quite as mu…

They can't make them a little bit bigger? But also I found this interesting image on the scale at hand here of a given launch of starlinks, no clue how many are included in a single launch, and it is a substantial amount of rack space they have been sending up at once: https://i.redd.it/zh7qvyfqgvx21.jpg So to me they have solved the issue of having a space based compute array network interfacing with the earth. They…

But most of that is nothing to do with compute. A rack of servers is all compute. Starlink sats are antennas, RF amplifiers, solar panels, laser links, shielding, even maneuvering thrusters and fuel for those (they could be electrical ion thrusters but they'll still need reaction mass, not sure what type they use). Probably some inertial reaction wheels too, they are used for spacecraft orientation, not positioning.

They are sending a few racks of stuff up every launch but the problem is not that it's underspecced. It's that most of it is just needed for equipment survival and communication in space.

You're talking about an environment that's full of radiation and goes from -200C to +200C every 90 minutes. That needs to be orbit managed and cooled (and sometimes also heated) without any airflow. Just sticking a few servers in a barrel isn't going to do the job.

Re: 45°C cooling design cuts data center water use to near zero

#83

Post by bozhark »

rnxrx wrote: post #76
VorpalWay wrote: post #71

I never looked into this, but why would a datacenter consume water for cooling in the first place? Sure, they use some. But just like you fill up the cooling loop in a car, once it is there it just circulates between the heat source and radiators and/or heat exchangers, with perhaps some minimal top off needed (since flexible tubing isn't 100% water proof). Or are they for some unfathomable reason using evaporative c…

It’s usually open loop - closed loop, so closed loop goes through CRACs or liquid cooled equipment manifolds. That heated water circulates through an heat exchanger on the roof that uses open loop cooling to shed the heat to the surrounding environment.

How inefficient

Re: 45°C cooling design cuts data center water use to near zero

#84

Post by bozhark »

derac wrote: post #75
VorpalWay wrote: post #71

I never looked into this, but why would a datacenter consume water for cooling in the first place? Sure, they use some. But just like you fill up the cooling loop in a car, once it is there it just circulates between the heat source and radiators and/or heat exchangers, with perhaps some minimal top off needed (since flexible tubing isn't 100% water proof). Or are they for some unfathomable reason using evaporative c…

the unfathomable reason is that it is significantly more energy efficient.

Then it’s not being measured adequately.

The loss of material must be included

If water is evaporated or spent out of the system.. it is not more efficient

Re: 45°C cooling design cuts data center water use to near zero

#86

Post by bozhark »

1e1a wrote: post #73
VorpalWay wrote: post #71

I never looked into this, but why would a datacenter consume water for cooling in the first place? Sure, they use some. But just like you fill up the cooling loop in a car, once it is there it just circulates between the heat source and radiators and/or heat exchangers, with perhaps some minimal top off needed (since flexible tubing isn't 100% water proof). Or are they for some unfathomable reason using evaporative c…

Yes, they are using evaporative cooling.

But you can do that in a closed system and recapture the water

Re: 45°C cooling design cuts data center water use to near zero

#87

Post by naasking »

wolvoleo wrote: post #34
amluto wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’ve been to datacenters, but not the huuuge ones people seem to talk about in the context of AI. They are noisy inside (due to air cooling, which is largely avoided by the tech in the OP), but they’re entirely unremarkable outside compared to any other commercial or industrial building. Computers are not inherently loud, nor is power conversion. Power plants are all over, even in populated areas. They’re not so bad…

It depends a lot on things like geology and some people are a lot more sensitive. It is really an issue. I don't have any datacenters near me but I can hear some heavy hums from the washing machine 3 floors up when it put my head on my pillow, for some reason it just propagates through the building physically. When I walk around I don't hear it. Datacenter noise can be the same. IMO they should be put away from habit…

> It depends a lot on things like geology and some people are a lot more sensitive.

People said this about high voltage electric lines and wind turbines. Blind tests proved they were imagining things.

Re: 45°C cooling design cuts data center water use to near zero

#88

Post by loeg »

why_at wrote: post #72

Maybe I'm being dumb, but I don't understand what the innovation is here. I get that they're using liquid coolant at higher than usual temperatures, but why couldn't they do that before? Most of the comparison in the article is for air cooled datacenters but what about other liquid cooled ones? Surely in all the previous datacenters that have been designed there has been someone doing the math and determining what te…

You have to design your hardware to tolerate being run in consistently hotter conditions. There's a tradeoff between cooling cost and failure rate / capex.

Re: 45°C cooling design cuts data center water use to near zero

#89

Post by cl0ckt0wer »

bozhark wrote: post #83
rnxrx wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s usually open loop - closed loop, so closed loop goes through CRACs or liquid cooled equipment manifolds. That heated water circulates through an heat exchanger on the roof that uses open loop cooling to shed the heat to the surrounding environment.

How inefficient

Way more efficient, that's why they do it. Evaporating water carries an enormous amount of energy.

Re: 45°C cooling design cuts data center water use to near zero

#90

Post by loeg »

VorpalWay wrote: post #71

I never looked into this, but why would a datacenter consume water for cooling in the first place? Sure, they use some. But just like you fill up the cooling loop in a car, once it is there it just circulates between the heat source and radiators and/or heat exchangers, with perhaps some minimal top off needed (since flexible tubing isn't 100% water proof). Or are they for some unfathomable reason using evaporative c…

Evaporative cooling consumes less expensive electricity than air conditioning. Electricity is much more expensive than water (for the same cooling load) in most places DCs are located.
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